UKCEN 23rd Annual Conference
Hosted by: The Oxford University Hospitals and Oxford Health Clinical Ethics Advisory Groups, 13th June 2025
Theme: “On the edge: end of life and related dilemmas in clinical ethics”
Medical professionals and clinical ethics committees have long experience and familiarity with questions relating to end of life care - for example, decisions about life sustaining treatment or cardiopulmonary resuscitation. But some cases venture into unfamiliar terrain. How should professionals respond to patients (with or without terminal illness) who have decided to voluntarily stop eating and drinking? Is anaesthesia an ethical option at the end of life for patients who do not wish to suffer? Is it permissible to provide palliative care for patients with treatment resistant mental illness? What questions will clinical ethics committees have to contemplate if assisted suicide becomes lawful in different parts of the UK?
Drawing on expert speakers from UK, Netherlands and US, UKCEN’s 2025 conference, will provide an opportunity for health professionals and clinical ethics committee members to explore these and related questions.
Venue:
Venue: Jesus College, Oxford (in person)
Confirmed Speakers
Professor Thaddeus Pope. Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. Ranked in the Top 20 most-cited health law scholars in the United States, Professor Pope has over 300 publications in leading medical journals, bioethics journals, and law reviews. Pope authors medical jurisprudence topics for The Merck Manual and UpToDate, coauthors the definitive, biannually-updated reference book The Right to Die: The Law of End-of-Life Decisionmaking, and coauthors Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking: A Compassionate Widely Available Option for Hastening Death. Pope also runs the Medical Futility Blog (with over five million page-views). https://thaddeuspope.com/
Professor Eduard Verhagen. University Medical Center, Groningen.
Dr Niki Kern, Consultant Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
Dr Jacinta Tan, Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, (Interview on The Life Scientific: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct43bj)
A/Prof Mehrunisha Suleman, University of Oxford
Prof Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford
Delegate Fees
Unless you qualify for a free place or bursary support (see below), fees are set at individual rates, as follows:
Prices - in person
Full registration £160
Concession £120
Student £60
There will be an optional dinner for workshop/conference attendees on the evening of 12th June - details to follow
NB Clinical Ethics Committees that have paid their 2024-25 UKCEN subscription are eligible for a free place.
* The concessionary rate applies to nurses and allied health professionals, lay members of Clinical Ethics Committees, and members of the Institute of Medical Ethics (IME).
What funding is available to support attendance?
Support is also available to cover the costs of attending this conference:
There will be a limited number of bursaries available from UKCEN - details to be available in early 2025
IME student bursaries: Students can apply to the Institute of Medical Ethics (IME) for funding to support their attendance at the conference. Information on how to apply can be found here.
Clinical Ethics Committee’s who are currently paid-up subscribing members of UKCEN are entitled to one free conference place per committee. The chair of the committee should email contact@ime-uk.org with the name of the committee member who is planning to take up that free place. Then: (1) register, at the bottom of this page; (2) once you have completed the registration process, you will be transferred to the Sagepay page where payment would ordinarily be taken – please close down your browser at this point; (3) all registration information will be retained. Please note that you will not receive an automatic response to your booking, but we will check the information is correct and confirm your booking/details in due course.
Pre conference workshop:
The pre-conference workshop will be on the 12th June. Bookings can be made at https://ime.datawareonline.co.uk/Event-Booking/EventId/1103