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Ethics Education
Program Description
Competence with Compassion™: Ethical Decision-Making in the Changing Culture of Long Term Care is a groundbreaking train-the-trainer program designed to help long term care professionals arrive at ethical solutions to the wide array of dilemmas encountered daily in the provision of care. It differs from other ethical training programs in several significant ways. First, it offers both a new and useful way of framing the particular ethical commitments of long term care providers as well as a 5-step process to guide decision-making when ethical dilemmas arise. Second, unlike other long term care ethics training programs, Competence with Compassion™: Ethical Decision-Making in the Changing Culture of Long Term Care has benefited from input from care providers at every stage of its development. Providers’ understandings of their responsibilities to the recipients of their care are combined with CARIE’s extensive experience as an elder advocacy organization to produce a training that reflects current understandings of the ethical dimensions of both giving and receiving long term care across settings.
Value of the Training Program
Competence with Compassion™: Creating an Ethical Culture for Long Term promises to be a valuable educational program for long term care providers and practitioners in the following ways:
• It introduces a new approach to long term care ethics premised upon the belief that the heart of ethical care is the fulfillment of specific, identified commitments that care providers make to care recipients.
• It offers a decision-making process that allows for participation by care team members, care recipients and other interested and involved persons;
• Its methodology provides a basis for explaining how decisions were reached;
• It provides consistency, reliability, and predictability in the process of ethical decision-making;
• It provides a pathway through situations that raise unfamiliar or especially challenging care dilemmas; and
• It acts as a counterbalance to pressures to make the most expedient and/or cost conscious decision.
The Training Package
The Competence with Compassion™ : Ethical Decision-Making in the Changing Culture of Long Term Care training package includes:
• A four-module train-the-trainer manual. Each module is intended to require an hour of training time. The modules may be presented continuously in one 4-hour training or may be presented individually.
• Supplemental reading and resources for the trainer. The training manual includes background reading on program development and concepts as well as an extensive bibliography.
• A PowerPoint CD. The training has an accompanying CD containing PowerPoint slides which are incorporated into the training.
• A DVD. Two trigger videos offer visual support for learning and an opportunity to practice applying the training material to actual case vignettes.
Participant Comments
Long term care administrators and staff who have attended Competence with Compassion™: Ethical Decision-Making in the Changing Culture of Long Term Care have said:
• ". . . .provides the knowledge to work through a process in making ethical decisions.”
• “. . . .helped us to see that we needed to take another look at how we were approaching the situation.”
• “. . . .was very helpful and we need to implement more detailed processes.”
• ". . . .provided a model to deliberate the best interest of [the care recipient].”
• "Our Ethics Committee comprised of Board Members, Nursing and Social Service is using the IDEAS [decision-making] model you presented . . . to consider our facility’s dilemmas. It provides a wonderful framework.”
In addition to the Competence with Compassion™ comprehensive ethics education program, CARIE provides training on individual ethical issues such as end of life decision-making, advance care planning, abuse prevention, decision-making and the decisionally incapacitated care recipient, ethics committee development and support, and others. For more information, contact Michele Mathes, JD or call 215.545.5728, ext. 239.