Washington, D.C., May 20th, 2016

As the President of the Jury I have the pleasure and the honor to announce the winner of the Hans Joachim Schwager Award for Clinical Ethics of this year which we will celebrate on the occasion of the 12th International Conference on Clinical Ethics & Consultation (ICCEC) in Washington, D.C. The winner is

Prof. Silviya Aleksandrova-Jankulovska, MD, PhD, DSc, MAS, Medical Universty of Pleven, Bulgaria.

The winning project’s title is
“Application of adapted METAP meethodology for clinical ethics consultation in Bulgaria”

I first met Silviya in 2002 when she came to Basel to participate in a residential month of the European Master in Bioethics. She was at that time and still is today a serious and engaged scholar as well as a student who continues to learn and to develop. Another distinctive feature of hers is that she does not allow herself to be discouraged by difficult circumstances – thus, being well prepared for initiating and maintaing clinical ethics support projects. Since 2002 we have met several times, mostly at conferences, over the years, and each time I could see what new progress she had made. One of the focuses of her work has been to establish forms and structures of clinical ethics support in Bulgaria.

With the METAP methodology she found a set of tools and a framework that can be applied in a context where the priorities lie on building and developing basic ethical competences among clinical staff. It can, however, also be used perfectly well to connect existing expertise of clinical ethics – such as hers or that of clinical ethics committees – with clinical groups and divisions that have so far been unexperienced in carrying out ethics projects.

The winning project does not only consist of the adaptation of concepts and tools to the Bulgarian situation. It also provides, after only a few years of practice, already rich data and cases from various clinical sites in Bulgaria illustrating the value of applying the METAP methodology to engage clinical staff in ethical case discussions. After this fulminant start it can be expected that clinical ethics support will continue to raise interest and obtain acceptance in the Bulgarian health care sector. We wish the winner and her winning project all the best for the future!

Prof. Dr. Stella Reiter-Theil, Dipl.-Psych.
President of Jury, Co-Director of ICCEC

Award Acceptance Speech [PDF]

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