Dr Heidi Matisonn

Trained as a moral and political philosopher, I am a Senior Lecturer in Bioethics in the EthicsLab in the Department of Medicine based in the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The central theme of my work is to think and enact care and solidarity in the context of the academy. As a philosopher, this means conceptualising these concepts as essential components of what makes us human. As an academic teacher, this means thinking deeply about how to structure a bioethics curriculum so that students have optimal opportunities for learning and development whilst also being supported to make sense of the ethics of our world. As a bioethicist, it means advocating for the integration of perspectives from care ethics into how we think about and address ethical challenges, together and in solidarity with one another. Finally, it means working alongside healthcare providers to understand the importance of care and solidarity in mitigating moral suffering. Over the last two years, I, together with my colleagues, have developed a multi-pronged approach to address the growing burden of moral distress in healthcare practice in South Africa, including running Clinical Ethics Forums, setting up a Hospital Clinical Ethics Committee, and developing and implementing a short course on ethical reasoning for healthcare professionals. The interventions are all underpinned by the idea of collaborating in community, and the aim is to positively influence the clinical culture in South African healthcare.