ulie and Helen combine their talents to make ethics and other health care related topics easily explored and understood. Julie's dramatic monologues provide an aperture for learning through the experience of others. Helen's presentation provides theoretical and practical teaching aimed at promoting personal, professional and organizational growth. Together their presentation offers a learning experience that is interactive and case-based.

Helen Emmott, RN, Ethics Educator/Consultant
Ms. Emmott is a nurse ethicist with several years' experience in the intensive care setting in both adult and pediatric areas. She studied philosophy and ethics at the University of Missouri - Kansas City and graduated with departmental honors in 1994.

She serves as a program consultant for Midwest Bioethics Center, most recently as the project manager for Caring Conversations, an advance care planning program and a Kellogg project, Cultural Diversity and End-of-Life Care. This diversity project culminated in a development and publication of a self-assessment tool for health care providers and the holding of a national summit where Emmott was the keynote speaker on "Making Connections."

In the past, Emmott consulted with the Tuskegee National Center for Bioethics, AARP, and the Robert Woods Johnson National Program Office in Kansas City and Birmingham, Alabama. She served on the St. Luke's Hospital Ethics Committee of Kansas City, Missouri for over ten years, acting as co-chair of the committee and as a member of the hospital board.

She currently chairs a seven-county Long-Term-Care Ethics Committee funded by the American Bar Association, is certified as a consultant through Rallying Points Certificate Programs, and teaches ethics for a national nursing training program, ELNEC (End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium). Emmott presents frequently in areas of healthcare ethics and cultural diversity and has published several cases in the Bioethics Forum, an ethics journal.

Julie Russell, RN, MA, Nurse Dramatist
Julie Russell identifies herself as a "nurse dramatist". Drawing on her experiences as a registered nurse practicing in a variety of health care settings, Julie researches, authors, and performs dramatic monologues and short plays on caregiving and bioethical issues. She has developed more than fifty characters of various ages and socio-cultural backgrounds, and has performed these in thirty-six states and the District of Columbia.

Her very first chracter dates back to 1984: a ninety-two year old nursing home resident. In 1990, Ms. Russell became involved with Midwest Bioethics Center and new characters emerged in response to a variety of bioethical issues. More recent creations include: three women reflecting on issues raised by the mapping of the human genome, a woman who is paranoid schizophrenic and refuses medication, an unemployed mother of four whose youngest child is severely developmentally disabled, a homeless woman who is HIV-positive, a pregant girl who is brain dead, a woman receiving dialysis who is non-compliant, a mother whose child needs a bone marrow transplant and the Medicaid managed care vendor is denying the surgery, a nurse dying of ovarian cancer, and the adult daughter of a woman whose advance directives are tragically overridden in an emergency. These one-woman dramatizations serve as unique teaching vehicles, putting a human face on important issues and stimulating ethical discussions.

In 1992, Julie resigned her position as Coordinator of the Gerontology Certificate Program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) Center on Aging Studies and moved into a homeless shelter, exchanging nursing services for room and board. She then moved to a low-income, culturally diverse neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas. Ms. Russell and her husband still live in East Argentine, where they were foster parents for many years. In the summer of 1998 Julie completed a forty-day, 700 mile, solo walk across Kansas in an effort to raise awareness of poverty in the state.

Ms. Russell is currently a faculty member in the UMKC Department of Sociology. In addition to regularly teaching a section of the introductory course, Russell teaches courses in life cycle human development (a required course for second year medical students), social gerontology, death and dying, and contemporary social problems. She is a co-founder of the Kansas City Servant Leadership School.

General ethics:

Theoretical approaches including narrative ethics Ethics committee training Values and values clarification Confidentiality and privacy issues Organizational ethics Leadership development Decision-making framewords and tools Advance care planning

Issues related to care of vulnerable populations:

Homeless, uninsured, disenfranchised Mental illness HIV/AIDS Geriatrics Pediatrics Cultural diversity

Dilemmas at the end-of-life:

Spirituality Pain and suffering Curative/comfort care Advance directive activation Communication Family care giving