AHLA's Speaking of Health Law

Health Law Career Journeys: Amy Martin, Executive Director, Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics

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In this series from AHLA’s Early Career Professionals Council, health law professionals share their career paths, what they wish they had known as students, and what a typical day in their job looks like. In this episode, Rob Yates, Managing Consultant, Berkeley Research Group, speaks with Amy Martin, Executive Director, Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics. Amy talks about her role as a clinical ethicist, the multi-disciplinary nature of her team, her rationale for getting a Master of Jurisprudence degree, and the growing field of bioethics.

Watch the conversation here.

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Speaker 1:

This episode of A H L A speaking of health law is brought to you by A H L A members and donors like you. For more information, visit American health law.org.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to a H L A. Speaking of speaking of Health Law podcast. I'm Rob Yates, and I'm a healthcare govern governance and regulatory compliance advisor in Berkeley Research group's Washington, DC office. We are back today with the Health Law Career Journey series, which is brought to you by the Early Career Professionals Council. Our goal here is to highlight the breadth of career paths available in health law and encourage those who are just starting their careers to explore all the different possibilities in this space. Today I'm excited to welcome Amy Martin, the Executive Director of the IU Health Fairbank Center for Medical Ethics from my home state of Indiana. Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

So you're a clinical ethicist. What does a day in your life look like?

Speaker 3:

Well, when I get asked that question, my, my canned response is, I don't think I've ever had the same day twice<laugh>, um, which makes my career, um, always entertaining. Um, I don't, I don't, uh, go to work and think, oh, I'm gonna be sitting at my desk and I'm gonna be, you know, pounding out a paper or, um, working on a computer all day long. Um, a day in my life consists of three main things. Uh, number one is policy work. I do a ton of work around policy that affects the clinical care of patients, uh, in a healthcare setting, looking at topics like brain death, um, whether or not, uh, how we implement the use of C P R for patients, withdrawing and withholding protocols, uh, advanced directives, um, organ donation, things around those things. And then looking at kind of more of the HR side of, uh, or the organizational ethics side of the work, thinking about conscientious objection to, um, procedures by our employees. Things along those lines would be the policy work education. Um, the Fairbank Center for Medical Ethics has a fellowship program, so I spend a fair amount of time doing education. We also teach, my team teaches in the medical school. Uh, we teach clinicians and nurses and other ancillary staff in, um, our health system. Um, and do a bit of research and writing around ethics issues. Uh, and then lastly, consultation and consultation is probably the bread and butter of the work we have. We do both bedside consultation, which is the response to a specific issue, uh, related to one, the care of one patient. Uh, we do consultation at an organizational level, again, kind of looking at things that you would think of in a policy scope, uh, thinking about how do we respond to new legislation around, uh, an abortion, the abortion ban in Indiana, or how are we responding from an ethical standpoint looking at, uh, the new legislation put forth on gender affirming care for minors. We spend a lot of time doing, um, clinical bedside, but also, especially in a post pandemic world. The organizational stuff is, is really heightened, uh, both to, due to the political landscape in Indiana, but also the recognition that organizational ethics is quite important at kind of a baseline level. Um, during the pandemic, the questions were things like, how do we allocate scarce resources? I e if we ran out of ventilators, how we would decide who would get, um, a ventilator if we, if we ran out. We work a ton with our legal counsel on that. Um, and um, yeah, so that's kind of the kind of what I do all day. Some version of some combination of those things.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds really interesting and very multidisciplinary.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. My team is very multidisciplinary. So I have a team that consists of, um, a pediatric intensivist doc. One, uh, attorney, one chaplain, one, uh, nurse who has a PhD, uh, or is working on his PhD, one Master's in Health and then a research expert. So we are, we are broad spectrum. Wow,

Speaker 2:

That's quite a room.

Speaker 3:

Very multi, very multidisciplinary, which is, which is really excellent and makes our work a lot easier cuz somebody has some expertise on anything that we're working on, pretty much.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. So I, I think it would be helpful if you could kind of break down each step you took to, to get to the place you're at in your career now.

Speaker 3:

<laugh>, how long do we have? No, I'm just kidding.<laugh>. Um, so in undergrad, I really, I thought initially I wanted to be a physician, surprise, surprise, like everybody else. Um, and then very quickly realized that a, I thought touching people was kind of gross and I didn't wanna do that. And then b I wasn't particularly great at science, I was good at philosophy. Um, so I found that this great, there was this wonderful combination of both medicine and philosophy and it, and it was the world of bioethics. Uh, so when I finished college, I went and got a master's degree in Bioethics. Uh, then did a fellowship after that in clinical bioethics. Started my career in the landscape of Catholic healthcare in Chicago, um, and then came down to iu, um, in 2018. And when I got down to iu, I decided, um, I, I knew I always wanted to get, oh, I'm sorry, I got a doctorate in there somewhere,<laugh>. Um, and then I decided when I got down to iu, I really like education and I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a JD or an mj. I got very quickly talked out of doing a JD because I never wanted to practice law. And the idea was that I just wanted to be really well informed on, I kind of, I would spend a lot of time, I read a lot of statutes and acts and I would read them and I'd be like, am I reading this right? And I really wanted to understand how, um, how the law worked a little bit better. Uh, so I went and got the master's in jurisprudence and think I really shored up the idea for myself that a laws are just sometimes poorly written and it wasn't, I wasn't reading them incorrectly. Um, but just having a baseline knowledge of how the law works. Um, you know, spending time in healthcare and, and hearing a lot of concerns about malpractice and things like that. Having taken MedMal at while I was getting my MJ and torts was particularly interesting and gives me much better baseline to understand where people are coming from. Um, and then, um, last year I moved into the vice president role at IU Health. Um, and so I've landed in much more of a strategy role than previously, but I spent a lot of time working with our governmental affairs people, our lawyers, and other, other clinician leaders to kind of shape how ethics, um, informs the work we do in medicine at IU Health.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, very, very cool. Um, so if there, if you could go back in time and, you know, kind of give yourself some, some advice, uh, from, from today's perspective, what, what would that be?

Speaker 3:

Oh, man, it's a great question. Um, you know, I don't really, I don't really know what I would, how I would answer that question. I think, um, I think I really lucked out in this career pathway that I'm in. It is not an easy one to get into. I think it's actually a really a growing pathway, uh, or not my pathway, but a growing career, uh, in the world of bioethics. And particularly actually coming from a legal background, um, when I was finishing my undergrad and wanting to get into bioethics, I wasn't sure if law school was the pathway or if philosophy was the pathway. Um, I, I think for me, I picked the correct pathway due to the fact that I'm much better at philosophy. I was pretty good at law school too. I, I really enjoyed it. Used the same part of my brain. I think, um, I do wonder if, if I might have pursued a JD at, at a younger age, um, but I don't think I would give my, I don't, I don't think I'd tell myself anything other than, yeah, just keep going. This is pretty great.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, I think that's great advice,<laugh>.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's nice. It's nice to know that um, you've had a good journey and that you wouldn't go back and change much of anything.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, I think we can all be happy in that<laugh>. Yeah,

Speaker 3:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Amy. I think this has been really informative for our members and I hope we can connect again.

Speaker 3:

Wonderful. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to subscribe to a H L A speaking of health law wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about a H L A and the educational resources available to the health law community, visit American health law.org.