PsychEd Episode 73: Psychiatry and Ethics in Ontario with Dr. Suze Berkhout

Welcome to PsychEd, the psychiatry podcast for medical learners, by medical learners.

This episode covers psychiatry and ethics in the Ontario context with Dr. Suze Berkhout, a clinician investigator and practicing psychiatrist working in acute inpatient psychiatry at University Health Network. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto in the department of psychiatry and affiliate faculty with the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science and Technology. Her research draws on critical creative methods in ethnography, art-science collaborations, and feminist science and technology studies, to consider the politics of diagnosis and social lives of interventions and emerging technologies in biomedicine. She works with artists, service users, clinicians and scientists to understand how serious illness experiences impact our sense of identity and our social roles, and she studies the impacts of novel and emerging technologies on experiences in healthcare settings. Suze loves coffee and finding new ways to think with stories.

The learning objectives are as follows:

1. Gain familiarity with key ethical concepts in psychiatry, including how ethics differs from law and the major ethical frameworks used in clinical reasoning.

2.  Identify and analyze common ethical challenges in psychiatric practice, such as autonomy, confidentiality, boundaries, and justice.

3. Apply practical strategies for ethical decision-making in clinical encounters.

Guest: Dr. Suze Berkhout

Hosts: Dr. Matthew Cho (PGY1), Dr. Annie Yu (PGY4) and Sena Gok (MD)

Audio Editing: Angad Singh (PGY2)

Resources from our guest:

Bioethics for the People Podcast: https://www.bioethicsforthepeople.com/

Mimi Khúc Open in Emergency: https://www.mimikhuc.com/projects/open-in-emergency

For more PsychEd, follow us on Instagram (@psyched.podcast), Facebook (PsychEd Podcast), X (@psychedpodcast), and Bluesky (@psychedpodcast.bsky.social‬). You can email us at psychedpodcast@gmail.com and visit our website atpsychedpodcast.org.