The Clinical Ethics Advisory Committee is pleased to invite you to the 2025 UHCW Ethics Conference.

This one-day conference, which is free for UHCW staff, is this year focussed on the theme of uncertainty in healthcare. It will explore how we should respond in the face of uncertainty in clinical care and when bigger societal uncertainties impact within the hospital.

Uncertainty is an ever-present feature of healthcare, not only in the well recognised areas of diagnosis, treatments and outcomes, but throughout the NHS. It is also taking on new and pressing forms, such as changing priorities in resource allocation and societal issues such as changing laws and guidance around gender recognition.

Navigating this uncertainty is becoming more challenging, as professionals are asked to balance clinical judgment, constrained resources and evolving models of shared decision-making. Patients too, experience significant uncertainty about their rights, the treatment options available to them and the degree to which their views will be heard and respected. The role of Clinical Ethics Committees in helping healthcare teams acknowledge, communicate and ethically respond to uncertainty is more important than ever. This conference will explore how we can better support ethical decision-making amid structural instability, clinical ambiguity and the very human challenges of not always knowing what comes next.

In this conference you can look forward to a broad range of talks and topics around the topic of uncertainty in the acute hospital; including perspectives from nursing, legal issues, clinical decision making and operational management. We will also be giving delegates the chance to act as the ethics committee themselves in our popular ethics cases session.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Christopher Bassford
Chair, Clinical Ethics Advisory Committee