RCH Children's Bioethics Centre

The Children’s Bioethics Centre (CBC) was founded in 2008, with the aim of enabling The Royal Children’s Hospital to proactively address the ethical challenges of providing health care to children and young people in an environment of technological and social change. The Children’s Bioethics Centre has become an integral part of the hospital. Located within the hospital, its staff of ethicists and clinicians are actively involved in the daily life of the hospital, providing a well-used clinical ethics service, and conducting education and training in ethics for health professionals across all departments of the hospital.

The Children’s Bioethics Centre is a national leader in provision of hospital-based clinical ethics services in Australia, and its staff have established international profiles in paediatric clinical ethics. The outstanding quality of the work done by the Children’s Bioethics Centre was acknowledged in 2013 with the international Hans Joachim Schwager Award for Clinical Ethics Consultation.

The CBC’s four major areas of activity:

• Clinical ethics service
• Education and Training program
• Research program
• Policy advice

The Children’s Bioethics Centre assists the Hospital in its goal of providing patient and family-centred health care.

Our experience shows that our clinical ethics services assist staff to work through complex decision-making in emotionally fraught situations, to collaborate more effectively with their colleagues and to communicate better with patients and families when there is conflict or disagreement. The ethics case consultation process helps clinicians to ensure that they have carefully and thoroughly considered all aspects of difficult situations, including the perspectives and beliefs of the child or young person and their family. In the uncommon situations where clinicians feel they cannot fully achieve what they believe to be the best outcome for the patient and their family, this process alleviates moral distress for all concerned.

Watch our Bioethics introductory video to learn more