Research/Publications

Research

Debjani Mukherjee Receives Fulbright Scholar Award

Debjani Mukherjee, clinical educator in the Donnelley Family Disability Ethics Program, has received a Fulbright Scholar Award to research the social and ethical dimensions of long-term adjustment to traumatic brain injury.

She is affiliated with the University of Calcutta's department of applied psychology and is spending nine months living and conducting research in India as part of this project. Debjani is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who have traveled abroad to some 150 countries for the 2006-2007 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program's purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.

The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Over its 60 years of existence, thousands of US faculty and professionals have studied, taught or done research abroad and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the United States. This award allows Dr. Mukherjee to pursue her research interests in psychosocial adjustment to traumatic brain injury, the cultural contexts of medical decisions and ethical dilemmas posed by neurological disorders.

Publications

Winter 2004 issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics is now available.

The issue, devoted to Disability Ethics, was guest edited by Teresa A. Savage, Carol J. Gill and Kristi L. Kirschner.

Most of the articles address these recurring themes in traumatic brain injury (TBI):

• Is the person with TBI the same or different for the premorbid person?
• What role should quality of life play in medical decision making, especially decisions on whether to treat?
• How should the interests of the family be balanced with those of the person with TBI, particularly when their interests are in conflict?
• How do issues of justice and the allocation of scarce resources affect quality of life?

“’Carving out’ an area for disability issues in bioethics now will help correct the historically inadequate approach to disability issues that has pervaded bioethics. With this collection of articles, we hope to demonstrate that commitment to certain principles and to ‘process issues’ in disability ethics is essential.”

The Center for the Study of Disability Ethics, the Hastings Center and the Brain Injury Association of America collaborate on a special Issue of Brain Injury Source

In 1999, an interdisciplinary working group was constituted by staff at the Hastings Center in New York and the Donnelly Family Disability Ethics Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) to explore the ethical issues arising around persons with trauma brain injury (TBI), particularly in relationship to their families. The impetus for the project was the perspectives of family members of persons with brain injury who believed that the moral questions they faced in the journey after brain injury with their family member were inadequately addressed:  practically, clinically and socially (i.e., in the realm of public policy). This group included persons with TBI, family members, disability activists, public policy experts including representatives from the Brain Injury Association of America and professionals with expertise in clinical ethics, disability studies, medical humanities, neurology, neuropsychology, philosophy, rehabilitation medicine and social work.

A series of six one-half day meetings were held in which a variety of themes were explored. Personal stories and case vignettes formed the foundation for the working group, from which various themes emerged that were subsequently explored by reviewing the literature and providing “thought” papers followed by lively discussion. Areas of consensus as well as disagreement were identified. What follows is an attempt to capture clinically salient aspects of this “moral landscape.”

Volume 6, issue 4 of the Brain Injury Source, the journal of the Brain Injury Association of America, was guest edited by Kristi Kirschner, MD and Strachan Donnelley, Ph.D. This issue is devoted to an in depth exploration of the moral issues around TBI. The “landscape” of ethical issues are captured in a fictionalized narrative about a man with TBI and told from a number of key perspectives, including that of this wife, his daughter, his mother and his treatment team. The narrative follows this man for 10 years: from the ER through his discharge to home and his eventual placement in a Nursing Home.

If you are interested in obtaining a copy of the journal, find it in the Brain Injury Association Bookstore (opens new window).