Catholic health conference gives dose of community and ethics

Dr. Thomas Cavanaugh of the University of San Francisco talks with medical student Dillon Stull after the Converging Roads conference at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Nov. 17. The conference on Catholic health care ethics covered such topics as end-of-life treatment and conscience rights. (Photo by Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)
 
December 6, 2018
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
 
Mary Kate Bakh never expected to be involved in moral dilemmas when she became a nurse. Bakh, who often works in end-of-life care, said decisions about how to treat and care for patients at the end of their lives – how much morphine to use, whether to start a feeding tube – happen in moral “gray areas.”
 
“It’s often hard to determine the difference between promoting comfort for patients or making them pass more quickly,” she said.
 
For her and other professionals and students in the medical field, the Converging Roads Conference organized by the St. John Paul II Foundation Nov. 17 at St. Mary’s Cathedral was an opportunity to better understand Catholic teaching on health care ethics. Conference speakers discussed the conscience rights of medical professionals, Catholic social doctrine around care for the sick, and issues in end-of-life care. After the conference, attendees gathered in the cathedral to celebrate the archdiocese’s first annual White Mass for health care professionals.
 
The conference was jointly presented by the John Paul II Foundation, the Archdiocese of San Francisco, the University of San Francisco and the Catholic Medical Association. Aubrie Miller, the conference organizer, told Catholic San Francisco she was pleased with the turnout for the event. “It’s our first year here, and we’ve laid a great foundation that hopefully we’ll build on for future years.”
 
Bakh said she appreciated the nuanced discussion around proportionate and disproportionate means of continuing life, and what amount of treatment to give a patient. Just as under treatment can be an issue, “often a patient can be ready for death while the family wants to continue treatment,” she said.
 
Dr. Natalie Rodden, a physician at St. Anthony North Health Campus in Colorado, talked about palliative care in end-of-life treatment. By focusing on improving the quality of life for people who are nearing death, doctors can help patients “continue to grow while at the end of life.” As Catholics, she said, palliative care is an opportunity to help people prepare for eternal life.
 
Rodden criticized physician assisted suicide, which became law in California in 2015, as a medical response to existential issues. Patients who choose assisted suicide can feel overwhelmed by their illness, misunderstand their diagnosis or feel they have lost their dignity. The end of life can be “a beautiful time for growth that suicide takes away,” she said.
 
Many attendees also enjoyed the opportunity to meet like-minded colleagues. Jung Gi Min, a Stanford University medical student, told Catholic San Francisco that seeing “successful physicians standing up for what is right is really encouraging.”
 
Being a practicing Christian can make it hard “to find solidarity at medical school,” he said, but praised the speakers for their discussions and the interest they had shown in mentoring the medical students in attendance.
 
The conference also marked the inaugural event of the San Francisco guild of the Catholic Medical Association. Dr. Cynthia Hart, a regional director for the CMA, told Catholic San Francisco that the association would “support and encourage compassionate, competent, faith-based care” in local medical professionals and offer education, fellowship and spiritual formation for members.
 
For more information on the Catholic Medical Association, visit their website cathmed.org. To join the San Francisco guild, email President Michel Accad at draccad@draccad.com.