The Science, Technology and Medicine Seminar (STMS) series, co-hosted by the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit and the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong, promotes cutting edge cross-disciplinary research that straddles the arts, sciences, and medicine. The aim is to provide a friendly forum to debate and test new ideas, papers, chapters, book projects and grant proposals, as well as topical issues and individual research. 

If you are interested in joining, or participating in future seminars, please let us know. We welcome suggestions for future presentations and discussion topics.

For further information about STMS activities,
please contact Dr Ria Sinha at riasinha@hku.hk, or Dr Carol Tsang at cctsang1@hku.hk.

Upcoming seminar:

27 February 2025 (Thursday)  |  2:00 pm  | Room CPD-2.14 (2/F HKU Centennial Campus)

Title:  Making Amends After Medical Error: Is Atonement Too Strong a Word?

Speaker:  Prof Carl Hildebrand, Assistant Professor, Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, HKUMed

Abstract:
The consequences of medical error are far-reaching. While the consequences for patients are obvious, often permanent and tragically fatal, the consequences for physicians who err can be less obvious. Yet the experience of having erred, as shared through the testimonies of physicians like David Hilfiker and Atul Gawande, threatens to be permanent and deleterious for a physician’s health and practice. In this talk, I will explore concepts of forgiveness and atonement in circumstances of medical error. I am particularly interested in whether the concept of atonement, though perceived to be religiously toned, may be more fitting in these circumstances than forgiveness. I will suggest some reasons why this might be the case, thinking toward how it might inform best practice for high quality mortality and morbidity conferences.

Bio:
Prof Carl Hildebrand is an ethicist and philosopher, having graduated with a DPhil in philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2018. His research engages questions at the intersection of ethics, moral psychology, and the history of philosophy. His current research focuses on the role of sympathy in Immanuel Kant’s conception of moral character and the good life, and he is working on a project on the philosophy of forgiveness funded by the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong. He has taught ethics in a variety of settings, most recently teaching “A Life Worth Living” and developing a new course on the ethics of human relationships as viewed through different scales and cross-cultural perspectives. Prior to that he taught in philosophy departments at the University of the Fraser Valley and the University of Oxford. He has taught ethics to public policy students at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and medical students at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine.