Mini-Workshop

Building an Interprofessional Moral Community: An Interprofessional Imperative

- CDT
Room: St. Nicholas A
Kimberly Somers, PT, DPT
Creighton University School of Pharmacy and Health Professions
Teresa Cochran, PT, DPT, MA, FNAP
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Lou Jensen, OTD, OTR/L
Creighton University
Gail Jensen, PhD, PT, FAPTA, FNAP
Creighton University
Track:
  • Collaborative Leadership and Shared Responsibility in Interprofessional Teams
Beyond clinical expertise, health professionals need skills to navigate complex ethical situations and systems-level barriers in contemporary practice. Systemic challenges, while not unique to any one profession, contribute to moral distress and burnout. Codes of ethics define obligations of professional behaviors, providing consistent language and guidelines for ethical action. However, codes may be too abstract and limited in use when moral distress requires collaborative decisions. Professionals must recognize their membership in a collective moral community, bound together in a Moral Commons’ (MC) framework. The MC creates a safe zone for interprofessional ethical dialogue, allowing teams to transcend personal and uniprofessional interests. Within the MC framework, this workshop applies the Dialogic Engagement Model (DEM) to facilitate the level of reflective analysis needed for complex ethical situations. The intentional dialogic process facilitates interprofessional communication through active listening and critical, reflexive reasoning. Because collaboration in the MC is not a natural process in healthcare, the workshop introduces Relational Coordination Theory (RCT) dimensions of effective teams including shared goals and mutual problem-solving needed for ethical analysis. An exemplar case engages discussion and illustrates practical strategies to build an interprofessional moral community, focused on its collective responsibility to combat systems-level ethical challenges to care.Session outline with active learning strategies: • Context/ Key concepts (20 minutes)

Interprofessional Moral Commons/ Moral communities

Using DEM to create space for problem-solving collaboration

• Small groups: Analysis of exemplar case (20 minutes)

Ethical dilemma highlighting common, yet complex gaps in systems of care, unstructured teams/ processes, resource limitations and

discharge planning challenges

Strategies from the DEM and RCT to facilitate communication and teamwork needed to address ethical dilemmas in the MC

• Large group: Generalizing Concepts (20 minutes)

Implications for academic and clinical teaching

Strategies to minimize barriers to building an interprofessional MC and implementing the DEM and RCT in own context

Learning Objectives

  • Discuss application of the concept of moral community and moral commons in interprofessional collaborative practice.
  • Apply the Dialogic Engagement Model, grounded with relational coordination strategies, to a contemporary exemplar case where interprofessional polarized debate and system constraints that present ethical dilemmas are at work.
  • Identify teaching and learning strategies and essential scholarship that align with implementing a moral commons framework.

References

  • 1. Santos-Cebrián M, Morales-Moya MÁ, De-Pablos-Heredero C, Pacheco-Olivares MD. How Much Dialogic Coordination Practices Matter to Healthcare Professionals-A Delphi Approach towards a Tool for Identification and Measurement. Healthcare (Basel). 2023;11(22):2961. doi:10.3390/healthcare11222961
  • 2. Swisher L, Royeen C (eds). Rehabilitation Ethics for Interprofessional Practice. Chapter 2 Historical context for the interprofessional rehabilitation moral commons, pp 20-48; Chapter 3 Dialogic engagement model for interprofessional rehabilitation ethics. Burlington, MA. Jones and Bartlett Learning. pp 49-80, 2020.
  • 3. Higgs J, Jones M. Multiple spaces of engagement and influence in clinical decision making. In Higgs J, Jensen GM, Loftus S, Trede F, Grace S (ed). Clinical Reasoning in the Health Professions. 5th ed. Elsevier. 2025; 56-65.
  • 4. Bolton, R., Logan, C., & Gittell, J. H. Revisiting Relational Coordination: A Systematic Review. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. 2021; 57(3), 290-322. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886321991597
  • 5. Epstein E, Haizlip J, Liaschenko J, Zhao D, Bennett R, Marshall M. Moral distress, mattering, and secondary traumatic stress in provider burnout: A call for moral community. AACN Advanced Critical Care. 2020;31: 148-157.