Andrea Frolic
Visiting Scholar and Interim Ethicist (NSHEN)
Andrea is the Director of the Program for Ethics and Care Ecologies (PEaCE) at Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) and Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Rice University in Houston, Texas; her thesis explored the professional identities and practices of clinical ethicists in the USA and Canada. Andrea completed a two-year fellowship in Clinical Ethics at the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, before joining HHS in 2004.
Over her twenty-five year career in healthcare, she has directed the HHS Clinical & Organizational Ethics Program, created a Regional Ethics Network for the Hamilton region, designed a multidisciplinary Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) team, managed the Psycho-spiritual Care program, and developed a Resilience Integration team to address the occupational stress of healthcare workers. The innovative PEaCE program sparks collaboration between psycho-spiritual care, ethics, trauma-informed care and end-of-life initiatives, including MAiD, to enhance provider resilience, teamwork, ethical practice, and quality of living and dying. Andrea’s research interests include: MAiD; healthcare worker well-being; resource allocation; ethics consultation practice; professionalization; ethics integration from bedside-to-boardroom; and developing practices to enable whole person care for patients, families and providers.
Andrea is serving as an Interim Ethicist for the Ethics Collaborations program in the Department of Bioethics at Dalhousie University from January-June 2025. In this role, Andrea provides clinical and organizational ethics support for Nova Scotia Health, the Nova Scotia MAiD program, and assists the Department in developing strategic projects.