Ethics

OFFICE of ETHICS

350 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115

617-355-6920 (Office) 617-919-4401 (Fax)

Christine Mitchell, RN, MS, MTS, FAAN - Director, Office of Ethics

Christine Mitchell is Associate Director of Clinical Ethics in the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Office of Ethics at Children’s Hospital Boston where she developed and directs the ethics consultation service. She leads the monthly Harvard Ethics Consortium, teaches in the ethics fellowship program, and organized and co-chairs the Ethics Leadership Group for the HMS teaching hospitals and affiliated health care facilities. Her current research focuses on evaluation of ethics consultation.

A nurse with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Boston University School of Nursing and a Master’s degree with a major in ethics from Harvard, Christine was a founding Board member of the Society for Bioethics Consultation, past President of the American Society for Law, Medicine and Ethics, and a Faculty Fellow in Ethics and the Professions at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. She has been involved with ethics committees nationally and locally since the 1980s, including the development of a Community Ethics Committee which she organized with Carol Powers in 2007 to bring public voices into discussion of ethical issues in health care. She currently serves on the clinical ethics consultation committee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities which is working on a Code of Ethics for and certification of ethics consultants.

Christine has made documentary films related to clinical ethics, including one which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1984, and a video for which she and film-maker Ben Achtenberg won a Freddie award in 2004. She has authored and co-authored ethics articles published in the American Journal of Nursing, The Journal of Clinical Ethics, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Newsweek. Articles about her have appeared in Reader’s Digest and Yankee magazine. Publications

Judi Friedson, RN, MS - Clinical Ethicist

Judi Friedson is a clinical ethicist at Children’s Hospital Boston and ethics consultant at Tewksbury Hospital who began her career in ethics in the mid 80’s as a founding member of the ethics committee at U.C. San Diego. In addition to a master’s degree in health communication, she has completed a fellowship in medical ethics at Harvard and ethics training at the University of Washington, School of Medicine and the Kennedy Institute at Georgetown University. A former writer for Ethical Currents, a publication of the Center for Health Care Ethics in Orange California, Judi has also written for Nursing Spectrum, Critical Care Nurse, and Baystate Nurse News.

Charlotte Harrison, JD, MPH, MTS - Clinical Ethicist (Ethics Advisory Committee Co-Chair)

Charlotte Harrison is a Clinical Ethicist at Children’s Hospital Boston where she co-chairs the ethics advisory committee, leads clinical ethics consultations, and facilitates educational programming for hospital staff. She has also served as director of the hospital’s literature & medicine program and co-chair of a hospital-wide organizational ethics task force on organ donation policy.

Before entering the field of bioethics, she graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced law for fifteen years, both at private firms and at Massachusetts General Hospital. She then returned to Harvard for masters-level training in ethics and public health. She has been a Fellow at Harvard Medical School (in medical ethics), at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School (in bioethics and law), and at the Saltzburg Global Seminar (in biotechnology policy). She has taught ethics at the undergraduate level and has given seminars for local and national organizations in biotechnology, law and ethics. Her bioethics-related writing has been published in the American Journal of Law and Medicine, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, and Transplantation Proceedings. Her current interests include the ethics of professional collaboration. She is completing a Ph.D. at Harvard University. Publications

Jane Bennett, Sr. Staff Associate - Website Administrator

As a former Verizon Information Services Specialist, Jane brings her technical, communication and administration talents to the Office of Ethics with great enthusiasm. She has become an integral part of the Institution, as Sr. Staff Associate, upon her arrival in April, 2004. Her take charge and can do attitude, have led to leadership roles in establishing and maintaining the internal and external websites for the Office of Ethics. The websites play a vital role within the institution as well as outside, as they remain an educational resource tool for clinicians, staff and other national teaching hospitals, who look to Boston Children’s Hospital for it's expertise, policies, innovative treatments and technologies.