Catawba Valley Medical Center invites healthcare professionals and the community to attend the next ‘Conversations in Ethics’ to be held from 12 noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, April 22 in the Northwest AHEC Lecture Hall, Room 112. This monthly, no-charge meeting provides an opportunity for discussion of some of the most important issues facing the healthcare profession today.

This month’s case study is called “A Difficult Heart Decision.” The hospital ethics committee was discussing an important and urgent case. A donor heart had become available, but an extremely rare thing had happened. Two heart-transplant candidates in the hospital were both matches for the donor heart. One patient was known to the committee as Mr. X, the other as Ms. Y. For someone with heart failure, Mr. X had been on the transplant waiting list a long time. He had been waiting one year and was near death. Ms. Y had just been placed on the list and could be sustained with medication for quite some time, possibly until another heart became available. The answer seemed obvious: give the heart to Mr. X. A number of the members of the committee did not agree with this answer. They argued that time on the transplant list should be only one factor considered. They saw a problem in Mr. X's medical record. At 64 years old, Mr. X had suffered from a heart condition for years. He had had two angioplasties and two bypass operations to correct a blockage of the heart's blood vessels. The problem seen by some committee members was that Mr. X still smoked, ate fatty foods, and was very overweight. After each procedure, doctors had warned Mr. X that he must change his lifestyle and that if he didn't his condition would worsen. He never stopped smoking, however, and never changed his diet. He said it was too hard.

The heart was about to be airlifted to the hospital. The committee members had to make their decision very soon. Questions to be considered at this session could include: What should the committee do? How would you vote if you were on the committee? In some cases, transplant operations are not successful, and a second operation is needed. Should someone be allowed two transplant procedures? Three? Why or why not? In some hospitals, alcoholics are not allowed to receive liver transplants. In other hospitals, they are. Those who see alcoholism as a genetically determined condition argue that these people cannot help their addiction. Others feel that these people are responsible and should just stop. Should hospitals deny transplant livers to alcoholics?

A free lunch will be served to those who register no later than Tuesday, April 20, 2010 by calling Spiritual Care at 828/326-3365.

Catawba Valley Medical Center’s Department of Organizational Learning is an approved provider of continuing nursing education by the North Carolina Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. Completion of this activity provides 1.0 contact hour.

Catawba Valley Medical Center is a not-for-profit, public healthcare system providing and promoting the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being of the public in addition to serving as a center for health education, wellness services, preventative medicine and acute care. CVMC, three times recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as a Magnet facility, was recently named as a “Distinguished Hospital for An Outstanding InPatient Experience” by J.D. Power and Associates as well as a Hospital of Choice by the American Alliance of Healthcare Providers.