Summer Institute in Applied Bioethics

The Summer Institute brings together clinicians, graduate students, and others interested in bioethics for an intensive week of learning with leading scholars and experienced practitioners. Through interactive discussions and real-world cases, participants will deepen their ethical understanding and develop practical skills to address complex challenges in health care and beyond.

Applied bioethics is at the core of the Department of Bioethics. Bioethics brings questions of justice to bear on the dynamics of healthcare, understood through practice, research and policy, and the experiences of whose diverse lives are being impacted by healthcare design and delivery. Bioethics seeks to address burdens of social, legal, and economic integration of new understanding, practices, and technologies, and applied knowledge creation to create the infrastructures through which benefits may accrue across healthy communities.

Save the date: inaugural date for the Summer Institute will be
7-12 June 2027

Explore the foundations. Develop your skills. Put bioethics into practice.

The Summer Institute in Applied Bioethics brings people together to explore ethical questions in health care, research, organizations, and communities. Designed for a broad range of learners—from physicians and other clinicians seeking advanced bioethics education without stepping away from practice for a master’s degree to graduate students in philosophy or bioethics considering careers in clinical bioethics—the program provides grounding in foundational concepts, established approaches, and practical methods.

Through discussion, practical tools, and shared reflection, participants will explore three core questions:

1. What is bioethics?

Explore the values, concepts, and perspectives that shape how we understand ethical questions. Consider what matters, whose interests are at stake, and how different approaches can help us think through difficult decisions.

2. How to do bioethics?

Develop practical skills for recognizing ethical issues, examining assumptions, weighing competing considerations, and building reasoned responses. Work through cases together, engage with different perspectives, and practise navigating disagreement and uncertainty.

3. How to integrate bioethics?

Explore how ethical reflection can become part of everyday practice, teamwork, leadership, and organizational decision-making. Identify ways to support ethical action and carry your learning into your own setting.

In addition to our Core Curriculum, additional elective topics will rotate each year. For 2027 the following topics will be included in the curriculum:

• Environmental and Public Health Ethics: The Environmental Role in Pandemics
• Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD): Current Issues in Assisted Dying in Canada

Application

You will be required to submit a one-page case study in your application for the Summer Institute. Please contact the SI Director to discuss your application.

Also required: undergraduate degree or equivalent (date awarded, and awarding university); any discipline will be considered.

A short narrative of bioethics related experience. Include a statement of your interest in bioethics, highlighting connections to their profession or experience.

All teaching will be in English: university-level English language proficiency required in writing, speaking and reading comprehension.
 

We are open to how you describe your case. It will ultimately be informed by each students’ knowledge, training, and experiences.

So, you may want to start with a personal reflection. You will be asked to verbally share this with the group so, as appropriate, please maintain, e.g., patient confidentiality, and respect for colleagues (no names or identified institutions).

In this respect, students may describe:

• An ethical dilemma in their health care role.
• A context in which people face everyday health ethics dilemmas.
• Why they are thinking of joining a health-based committee.
• A reflection on the health needs of their/ a community.
• A specific area of bioethics they need more knowledge or training in.
• Their career objectives, or context of their workplace, and the relevance of the Institute to those goals.

The case will be discussed during the week, and students will have the chance to develop their case with their mentor.

Successful applicants will be selected by the SI steering committee, and will register with Open Learning and Career Development. [See OLCD webpage]

The overarching goal of the Summer Institute is to enrich life-long learning by creating a community in bioethics.

Summer Institute goals:

• Build a community among participants and foster both local connections and broader networks that support ongoing collaboration and learning beyond the Institute itself.

• Deepen understanding of foundational concepts and methods in bioethics by developing case reflection.

• Develop awareness of how ethical decisions are made across the breadth of the bioethics field (clinical, organisational, research, public health, etc.), and in identifying principles, values, and resources.

• Apply social justice-centred lenses to research and practice in bioethics.

• Foster the integration of bioethics into practice by recognising the ethical dimensions, distinguished from those which are purely clinical or legal.

• Develop opportunities to meaningfully participate in bioethics, that enriches students’ lives, helps them to practice bioethics more confidently in their role, and may have positive impact in career choices, health organisations, and public social wellbeing.