Humphrey Undergraduate Philosophy Colloquium Showcases Clinical Ethics Career Path in Trauma-Informed Care

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences 

The Philosophy Department welcomed students from across North America for the 23rd Annual Steven Humphrey Undergraduate Philosophy Colloquium, where presenters explored topics ranging from trauma and art to the ethics of wearable biomonitors in carceral settings, culminating in a keynote address, “Triggered: Moral Emotions and Trauma-Informed Care.” 

“The Humphrey Colloquium is our flagship event,” said Philosophy Department Chair Andreas Elpidorou. “After hosting the conference for over two decades, we have established the event as a place where undergraduate students from around the country—and sometimes even from abroad—come together as an intellectual community to present the results of their research, exchange ideas, and help each other grow as philosophers and thinkers.” 

Presented by Professor Elizabeth Lanphier of the University of Cincinnati, this year’s keynote explored the ways in which philosophers can support patients, physicians, and healthcare teams in navigating family dynamics and medical decisions in a hospital setting. Lanphier emphasized the importance of trauma-informed care, and the need for practitioners to look at the role trauma plays both in patients, healthcare workers, and in their own reactions to any given situation in a medical setting.  

By pausing and digging deeper into the origin of emotional reactions of the people involved in the medical decision making process, philosophers can help to identify triggers that may be impacting a family member’s reluctance to take medical action, or any emotional response that may be questionable to others who do not understand past trauma that is at play. 

Lanphier described a Clinical Ethics Consultation, in which philosophers like herself are called upon to help navigate conversations and decisions in medical settings. 

“Hospitals and health systems provide some sort of service or mechanism to address ethical questions and dilemmas that arise in a healthcare context,” she said. “There are people like myself who are trained in ethics and who are on-call ethicists, and part of our time is dedicated to doing that work,” Lanphier said. 

This is a career path for philosophers who can have a positive impact on patient and physician interactions and outcomes. 

“My work as an ethics consultant in a health system led me to trauma informed care – as I was learning, I thought, ‘How can we be trauma informed as ethicists in this setting’? What would that look like and what should that look like?” she asked. 

These questions came up for Lanphier during ethics consultations where some of the ethical questions being raised were because of past traumatic events that healthcare teams have experienced, leading them to questions about a current patient. Or the consultation might be about past traumatic events for family members. That’s when she started to make the case for why ethics consultations must be more trauma informed. 

In one example she shared, a young man in his 20s who had been cared for by birth by his mom had cerebral palsy. He needed a breathing tube placed surgically as a child, and he needed a new feeding tube to be surgically placed in his abdomen. This change in feeding tube placement triggered a traumatic response from the young man’s mother, which was not initially understood by the medical team, as she was refusing to move forward with giving consent for the new tube. 

“I received a call and someone says, ‘Something is wrong with mom.’ For me, this set off a few flags.” Lanphier described. “I heard this through a lens of trauma informed care so that I could show up understanding the medical team’s concerns, and also to think about what would enhance the mom’s sense of safety.” 

During the ethics consultation, the mother uncovered a story that revealed why so many emotions were coming up for her. It all stemmed back to her son's tracheostomy he had 20 years prior. During that time, she felt coerced and didn’t want that to happen again. 

“Having that conversation helped her to come to her own resolution of the situation. This is one way trauma informed practices can help people find their own agency, self-efficacy, under the right conditions of support, transparency, safety and empowerment,” Lanphier said. 

Philosophy Professor and Director of UofL's MA in Applied Philosophy, Health Care Ethics programs, Lauren Freeman, said she hopes that students saw the promise and value of doing applied philosophy.   

“Dr. Lanphier, who did a PhD in philosophy, works as a pediatric clinical bioethicist at a major research and teaching hospital in Cincinnati,” Freeman said. “Every day, she draws upon her training and tools of philosophy to solve real-world problems. She brings together families, patients, and healthcare professionals, and using a trauma-informed approach, helps them reason through difficult medical and moral situations to arrive at the best outcomes. Putting philosophy into practice in the world can have positive consequences. I hope that the talk gave students a new perspective on the value and potential of what they are studying.” 

Associate Professor of Philosophy Boomer Trujillo said Lanphier's keynote showed that philosophy and ethics consultants are vital to central institutions such as hospitals.  

“Ethics consultants in hospitals help to alleviate moral distress in hospital staff, advocate for the good of patients, and set up infrastructure for consistent decision making in the constantly evolving world of medicine,” Trujillo said. “Lanphier showed that trauma-informed care in hospitals helps hospital staff to be aware of their own motivations and perspectives, as well as those of their patients, and it helps patients to understand how they can think through stressful decision points in their lives.” 

Trujillo was particularly impressed by UofL’s students and their presentations throughout the day.  

“Michaela Mckiernan's talk on trauma in art could easily have been presented at national organizations in the philosophy of art for us professionals. Kathleen Clarke's poise and readiness in the Q&A of her talk was expert. And Connor Becker's talk on the moral imperative for access to healthcare for anyone finding themselves within the borders of the USA started conversations that I heard carried through lunch and dinner,” Trujillo said. 

Elpidorou said every year, the goal of this event remains the same: to create a community that students from across the globe can remain connected to moving forward. 

“My hope is that the students gained a sense of belonging in a community of individuals who share with them the importance of the virtues of the mind—critical thinking, intellectual humility, and openness to the ideas of others,” he said.