The Department of Nursing Sciences of Antonine University, Mejdlaya-Zgharta campus, launched its first scientific day on Saturday, May 4, 2019. An audience of 200 people attended this conference day, mostly nursing graduates, teachers, and students. Other notable figures were also present for the occasion, including H.E. Joseph Naffah, Maronite patriarchal vicar of the District of Zgharta and Bcharre.

The theme of the day was “Ethics at the heart of oncology care”, an important subject that many health professionals are concerned with. Ethics means generating multiple questions and, as pointed out by Dr. Mona Nehmé, director of the Department of Nursing Sciences, “(ethics) engage us all in transdisciplinary reflection because certain decisions involve socio-cultural, even religious issues, and sometimes healthcare professionals feel uncertain when facing these questions.”

To best respond to this, a panel of experts was consulted, including Dr. Myrna Doumit, president of the Order of Nurses in Lebanon; Professor Father Charbel Chelala, director of the Center for Ethics and Bioethics of the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) and member of the Lebanese National Consultative Committee on Ethics (LNCCE). Among them were also Dr. Françoise Cerrexhe, professor at the Faculty of Public Health at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and the Haute Ecole Léonard de Vinci (Belgium); Dr. Marcel Massoud, head of department at the oncology unit at Notre Dame des Secours; and Dr. Marie-Claude Fadous Khalifé, head of the neonatology and pediatrics department at Notre Dame des Secours.

The main themes addressed were the importance of providing nursing support from the discovery of cancer up to palliative care; the need to create a healthy work environment for health professionals to carry out their mission; the need to reflect on values and ethical questions, given their impact on the skills of health professionals. The value of creating an ethics unit in healthcare training institutes was also discussed as well as the usual ethical issues in adult and pediatric oncology and the necessary communication skills required in the field of pediatric oncology (exhibition of a case study).

In short, this conference highlighted the importance of providing health professionals with conceptual and practical tools from ethical fields.