Hello from Philadelphia! Last summer I came on board as the Ethics SIG leader. I have been interested in ethics for much of my career, with much of my clinical experience focused on ethical decision making and end-of-life care. In 2012, I completed my Masters degree in Bioethics (MBE) from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. I focused much of my bioethical training on narrative bioethics, mediation and social media/technology usage in medical settings. I teach bioethics as part of the healthcare specialization at the Penn School of Social Policy and Practice and will also be teaching this topic in Penn’s new-post masters advanced certificate program in oncology social work. I’m hoping to bring energy and leadership to the SIG and AOSW! I’m also thrilled to introduce our new SIG co-chair, Lind Roberts, LCSW, OSW-C, MSW, Masters in Divinity (M.Div).

Lind recently relocated to the Philadelphia area and through our networking indicated an interest in getting involved in AOSW leadership. Given her training in her M.Div program, we thought this could give an interesting perspective to the Ethics SIG, given that many of us work for healthcare organizations affiliated with religious/spiritual organizations—and that this very affiliation can present ethical dilemmas for patients and healthcare providers. It is our hope that our combined clinical/professional experience and advanced training in both bioethics and divinity will offer the SIG members strong leadership and diversity in our work as a SIG.

We are looking to establish an ethics working group as an offshoot of the SIG to work on a number of different projects including:

• Construction of a comprehensive ethics reading resource list,
• Highlighting ethics trainings available nationwide that all AOSW members might find of interest,
• Contributing to the “Ethics Case of the Month” presentation to the SWON listserv,
• Presenting ethics topics at conferences,
• Providing ethics mentorship, and
• Researching ethics CE requirements.

Speaking of conference, we planned a robust SIG meeting and presentation for Atlanta! Lind led the “business” portion of the meeting and talked about goals and recruiting members for our working group. I then presented the updates to the NASW Code of Ethics that went into effect this year. There are MANY changes focused on use of social media and technology in our practice. We explore changes to privacy, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, cultural awareness and social diversity, informed consent and competence guidelines within the code with particular attention to the new ethics of technology.

If you did not make the trip to Atlanta, you can still get involved! Contact Lind at lindaroberts05@gmail.com or myself to let us know you’d like to be part of the ethics working group. We plan to hold our first conference call in mid to late July.

Lind and I look forward to cultivating an environment of ethical learning, sharing and resources for AOSW and working with many of you to further social work leadership in medical ethics.