News Report / Profile
Professor António Barbosa Interview-Director of the Bioethics Centre of FMUL
The Newsletter Editorial Team interviewed Professor António Barbosa, Guest Auxiliary Professor with Aggregation of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, Director of the Bioethics Centre and Coordinator of the Palliative Care Unit and of the Academic Unit for Studies and Action on Mourning. He is also the Coordinator of the Master Degrees in Bioethics and in Palliative Care.
António Barbosa: The Bioethics Centre of FMUL was a response to the challenge posed by contemporary societies where the two thousand year old charity ethics of health professionals has been confronted, in recent decades, with the assumption of autonomy on the part of patients, prolonging the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of citizens who have been part of its everyday life in the last two centuries. This ethos has also been shaken off in the last thirty years by the growing involvement of techno-sciences in the field of health and which led to increasing health budgets, causing regulatory and differentiation state policies and directly or indirectly involving, either by means of private or public assurance, the commitment and/or complicity, often ambivalent and unprepared, of health professionals.
The Centre was set up following the tradition initiated by Professor Barahona Fernandes in the 1970s on the human side of health. Its first Director was Professor João Ribeiro da Silva, assisted by Professors António Barbosa and Fernando Martins do Vale, who were also interested about this field and had specific training in it. A pioneer work was further developed with the creation of a comprehensive master degree in Bioethics with the collaboration of several national and international academic institutions, constantly seeking to involve lecturers and students from our Faculty. Since its inception, there has been an on-going concern to disseminate and update the field of bioethics among the scientific and professional community and the general public through the organization of open entrance seminars on bioethics and of training courses for the country’s ethics committees.
In 2004, under the direction of Professor António Barbosa, the library and the documentation centre were created, and since then several partnerships have been established with various groups from our University interested in this field – The Philosophy Centre, the Philosophy of Science Centre, the Law School, the Institute of Social Sciences – as well as with the New University of Lisbon and the Catholic University of Portugal. Several joint training courses and dissemination activities have been conducted, such as the 3rd Workshop “Advancing Bioethics at the University of Lisbon”, on transplantation, which our centre organized.
Our international contacts with north American and European centres have also been strengthened (our Centre organized the Annual Conference of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics), the same applying to Brazilian centres, with our Centre organizing the 7th Portugal-Brazil Meeting on Bioethics in July 2012 at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. We also aim to establish links with Portuguese-speaking African countries..
Since its inception, members of the Bioethics Centre have also been part of the Ethics Committees of FMUL, HSM and IMM.
Within its range of activities, the Centre has differentiated two complementary areas – palliative care and mourning – articulating them with the creation of two corresponding Academic Units. Both respond to an emerging need to humanize health care in contemporary society, where the changes in the patterns of morbidity and mortality, the profound changes in family and social structures and the fast advance of techno-sciences paradoxically offer both conditions for progress and increasing vulnerabilities which require proactive professional and ethical answers.
The core objective of the Bioethics Centre is to contribute to the advancement of individuals and society, with particular focus on vulnerable populations. It stands as an opportunity for sustainable social transformation, generating opportunities for individuals and groups, at academic, professional and civic levels. It develops its own programmes and establishes strategic collaboration partnerships with other institutions.
Its ultimate purpose is to stimulate the vitality of ethics in university health institutions in and the society in general, enabling individuals and groups to identify ethical issues and to act on ethically sound grounds.
Newsletter: What are the main functions and activities the Centre carries out, in terms of teaching, research and community outreach?
Prof. António Barbosa: In scientific and academic terms, the Centre fosters conceptual innovation and empirical research through two key complementary strands – clinical bioethics and organizational bioethics – which have been conducting several projects in various units of the HSM across various areas, leading to the completion of 54 master degree dissertations, which were written with the purpose of ensuring results could be applied to the health system.
From the standpoint of education, the Centre seeks to be a catalyst in the deconstruction and reflection of the several dimensions of life and a tool for information and action, aiming to generate social awareness among the academic community and public opinion and promote social and ethical maturity.
With regard to health professionals, the Centre aims to train internal change agents who may help make prudential decisions through deliberation processes on individual or collective actions of human life.
Our ultimate goal is to look after patients and their families and ensure that all activities contribute to the prevention of avoidable suffering. We are near them during the inevitable stages, helping them have better quality of life, better social environment, offering them coordinated, comprehensive and reflected care through interdisciplinary partnerships based on relationship and fundamentals values, such as dignity, respect and relational ethics.
Newsletter: Which are you personal and professional expectations to the Bioethics Centre?
Prof. António Barbosa: Through the various activities of the Centre and renewed modalities, our ambition is to introduce reflective thought and question or deconstruct human condition with responsibility and solidarity, with competence and compassion, always trying to find the appropriate time and how to implement the definition of ethics proposed by Ricouer: “the goal of a good life with and for others within just institutions”.
António Barbosa: The Bioethics Centre of FMUL was a response to the challenge posed by contemporary societies where the two thousand year old charity ethics of health professionals has been confronted, in recent decades, with the assumption of autonomy on the part of patients, prolonging the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of citizens who have been part of its everyday life in the last two centuries. This ethos has also been shaken off in the last thirty years by the growing involvement of techno-sciences in the field of health and which led to increasing health budgets, causing regulatory and differentiation state policies and directly or indirectly involving, either by means of private or public assurance, the commitment and/or complicity, often ambivalent and unprepared, of health professionals.
The Centre was set up following the tradition initiated by Professor Barahona Fernandes in the 1970s on the human side of health. Its first Director was Professor João Ribeiro da Silva, assisted by Professors António Barbosa and Fernando Martins do Vale, who were also interested about this field and had specific training in it. A pioneer work was further developed with the creation of a comprehensive master degree in Bioethics with the collaboration of several national and international academic institutions, constantly seeking to involve lecturers and students from our Faculty. Since its inception, there has been an on-going concern to disseminate and update the field of bioethics among the scientific and professional community and the general public through the organization of open entrance seminars on bioethics and of training courses for the country’s ethics committees.
In 2004, under the direction of Professor António Barbosa, the library and the documentation centre were created, and since then several partnerships have been established with various groups from our University interested in this field – The Philosophy Centre, the Philosophy of Science Centre, the Law School, the Institute of Social Sciences – as well as with the New University of Lisbon and the Catholic University of Portugal. Several joint training courses and dissemination activities have been conducted, such as the 3rd Workshop “Advancing Bioethics at the University of Lisbon”, on transplantation, which our centre organized.
Our international contacts with north American and European centres have also been strengthened (our Centre organized the Annual Conference of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics), the same applying to Brazilian centres, with our Centre organizing the 7th Portugal-Brazil Meeting on Bioethics in July 2012 at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. We also aim to establish links with Portuguese-speaking African countries..
Since its inception, members of the Bioethics Centre have also been part of the Ethics Committees of FMUL, HSM and IMM.
Within its range of activities, the Centre has differentiated two complementary areas – palliative care and mourning – articulating them with the creation of two corresponding Academic Units. Both respond to an emerging need to humanize health care in contemporary society, where the changes in the patterns of morbidity and mortality, the profound changes in family and social structures and the fast advance of techno-sciences paradoxically offer both conditions for progress and increasing vulnerabilities which require proactive professional and ethical answers.
The core objective of the Bioethics Centre is to contribute to the advancement of individuals and society, with particular focus on vulnerable populations. It stands as an opportunity for sustainable social transformation, generating opportunities for individuals and groups, at academic, professional and civic levels. It develops its own programmes and establishes strategic collaboration partnerships with other institutions.
Its ultimate purpose is to stimulate the vitality of ethics in university health institutions in and the society in general, enabling individuals and groups to identify ethical issues and to act on ethically sound grounds.
Newsletter: What are the main functions and activities the Centre carries out, in terms of teaching, research and community outreach?
Prof. António Barbosa: In scientific and academic terms, the Centre fosters conceptual innovation and empirical research through two key complementary strands – clinical bioethics and organizational bioethics – which have been conducting several projects in various units of the HSM across various areas, leading to the completion of 54 master degree dissertations, which were written with the purpose of ensuring results could be applied to the health system.
From the standpoint of education, the Centre seeks to be a catalyst in the deconstruction and reflection of the several dimensions of life and a tool for information and action, aiming to generate social awareness among the academic community and public opinion and promote social and ethical maturity.
With regard to health professionals, the Centre aims to train internal change agents who may help make prudential decisions through deliberation processes on individual or collective actions of human life.
Our ultimate goal is to look after patients and their families and ensure that all activities contribute to the prevention of avoidable suffering. We are near them during the inevitable stages, helping them have better quality of life, better social environment, offering them coordinated, comprehensive and reflected care through interdisciplinary partnerships based on relationship and fundamentals values, such as dignity, respect and relational ethics.
Newsletter: Which are you personal and professional expectations to the Bioethics Centre?
Prof. António Barbosa: Through the various activities of the Centre and renewed modalities, our ambition is to introduce reflective thought and question or deconstruct human condition with responsibility and solidarity, with competence and compassion, always trying to find the appropriate time and how to implement the definition of ethics proposed by Ricouer: “the goal of a good life with and for others within just institutions”.