Welcome to Ethics After Hours!

On this page we will give you some Ethics After Hours entertainment ideas, which have ethical overtones in health, social media, justice, etc.

Some suggestions will be video (Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube) and some will be audio (different podcasts, White Coat Black Art).


Documentary on MAiD

Her Last Project

This film is the extraordinary story of Dr. Shelly Sarwal, a physician from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), an incurable disease, Shelly chose to undergo the recently legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) procedure and become an organ donor. As the first person in Nova Scotia to undergo this complicated medical journey, she dedicated the short time she had left on this earth to educate health professionals and the  public about being in control of your death and creating a meaningful legacy through organ donation.  

Her Last Project is directed by Emmy-nominated Rosvita Dransfeld and produced by Canadian Blood Services, in partnership with Legacy of Life at the Nova Scotia Health Authority.

NEW

Period. End of Sentence

Documentary

This award-winning short documentary aims to raise awareness about the cultural stigma around menstruation in rural India. To promote affordable access to menstrual pads, a group gets together to produce low-cost period pads on a new machine and work toward financial independence.

Discussion questions

  • What stood out the most to you in this movie and why?
  • How does the cultural stigma around menstruation impact people with uteruses?
  • How might the production and sale of affordable period pads help address the cultural stigma around menstruation?
  • What systemic issues may contribute to menstrual inequity and period poverty – both in India and in other countries?
  • Can you think of other ways to address menstrual inequity in addition to the approach presented in the movie?
  • Critiques of this movie argue that the awareness around cultural stigma and menstrual inequity that the movie aims to spread doesn’t necessarily help the people in India that it is intended to help. Do you agree with this critique? Why/ why not? https://dailynorthwestern.com/2021/01/29/campus/experts-discuss-the-problematic-assumptions-behind-solutions-to-menstrual-inequity-in-india/

Netflix

Stowaway

A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board.

episode 5 – Undercurrents

John Boockvar gives a family a grim update. David performs Mitzie’s delicate procedure. The two doctors recall how their fathers shaped their careers.

Lenox Hill – Undercurrents – Netflix


Diagnosis

A Question of Trust

‘A Question of Trust’ is the fifth episode in the Netflix documentary series Diagnosis, which based on Dr. Lisa Sanders’ column in the New York Times. In this episode we meet Lashay, a 17 year old girl who is not able to hold down anything she eats or drinks. Dr. Sanders turns to crowdsourcing for advice regarding a possible diagnosis given Lashay’s symptoms. The crowd’s suggestions point toward a diagnosis that Lashay has already been given by her own doctors, but Lashay and her family are leery of the crowd’s advice. The way Lashay’s possible diagnosis was communicated to her has left her feeling judged by her medical providers and the family’s reluctance to accept the diagnosis appears to be due to a lack of trust in the medical profession. 

Diagnosis – A Question of Trust – Netflix


This is Where I Leave You

When their father passes away, four grown, world-weary siblings return to their childhood home and are requested — with an admonition — to stay there together for a week, along with their free-speaking mother (Jane Fonda) and a collection of spouses, exes and might-have-beens. As the brothers and sisters re-examine their shared history and the status of each tattered relationship among those who know and love them best, they reconnect in hysterically funny and emotionally significant ways.

This is Where I Leave You – Netflix movie


Brené Brown: The Call to Courage

With humour and empathy, Brené Brown discusses what it takes to choose courage over comfort in a culture defined by scarcity, fear and uncertainty.

Brené Brown: The Call to Courage – Netflix movie


My Beautiful Broken Brain

After suffering a stroke at age 34, a woman documents her struggles, setbacks and eventual breakthrough as she relearns to speak, read and write.

MY BEAUTIFUL BROKEN BRAIN is 34 year old Lotje Sodderland’s personal voyage into the complexity, fragility and wonder of her own brain following a life changing hemorrhagic stroke. Regaining consciousness to an alien world – Lotje was thrown into a new existence of distorted reality where words held no meaning and where her sensory perception had changed beyond recognition. This a story of pioneering scientific research to see if her brain might recover – with outcomes that no one could have predicted. It is a film about hope, transformation and the limitless power of the human mind.

My Beautiful Broken Brain – Netflix movie


The Bleeding Edge

This eye-opening look at the fast-growing medical device industry reveals how the rush to innovate can lead to devastating consequences for patients.

Medical devices can save lives, help us live longer, and improve our quality of life. In The Bleeding Edge, Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering and Amy Herdy explore how lax regulations, corporate cover-ups and the drive for profit in the medical device industry may put patients at risk. The program features cases where medical devices such as Essure (a permanent birth control device), vaginal mesh, the DaVinci Surgical System, and chrome-cobalt hip-replacements have caused irrevocable harm to patients. 

The Bleeding Edge – Netflix movie


Wonder

After being home schooled all his life, a boy with facial differences attends a traditional school, where he must find friends among his bullies.

Wonder – Netflix movie


Amazon Prime

Hope and Fear: How Pandemics Changed the World

COVID-19 is just the latest in a long line of pandemics that have devastated, and in some cases destroyed, societies throughout history. This film looks at the circumstances that caused diseases, and how science searched for and found cures and vaccines to save millions of lives. Scientists are once again on this quest as the world seeks solutions to a crisis that threatens our future.


Podcast

Apologetical

Radiolab podcast, NPR

( Lovelorn Poets / Flickr )

How do you fix a word that’s broken? A word we need when we bump into someone on the street, or break someone’s heart. In our increasingly disconnected secular world, “sorry” has been stretched and twisted, and in some cases weaponized. But it’s also one of the only ways we have to piece together a sense of shared values and beliefs. Through today’s sea of sorry-not-sorries, empty apologies, and just straight up non-apologies, we wonder what it looks like to make amends.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/radiolab-apologetical


Coronavirus BONUS: Helping the Helpers

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

The heaviest burden of Covid-19 has fallen on the shoulders of medical staff, first responders and others who care for the sick and vulnerable. These people are saving lives, while putting their own health and mental wellbeing at risk.

Several doctors and nurses have written asking for advice on the small ways they can make their daily lives a little easier to bear. So we asked cardiologist and wellbeing expert Dr Michael Rocha to explain the ways he’s preparing for shifts on a Covid ward.


Playing God

Podcast from Radiolab Playing God

When people are dying and you can only save some, how do you choose? Maybe you save the youngest. Or the sickest. Maybe you even just put all the names in a hat and pick at random. Would your answer change if a sick person was standing right in front of you?

In this episode, we follow New York Times reporter Sheri Fink as she searches for the answer. In a warzone, a hurricane, a church basement, and an earthquake, the question remains the same. What happens, what should happen, when humans are forced to play god?

( Photo Credit: Twm / flickr )

Netflix

What They Had

A woman must cope with her brother urging to put their mother battling with dementia in a facility and her father who is committed to keeping his wife home.

What They Had – Netflix movie


End Game – Documentary

End Game

Facing an inevitable outcome, terminally ill patients meet extraordinary medical practitioners seeking to change our approach to life and death.

End Game – Netflix


Return to Zero


RETURN TO ZERO is based on the true story of a successful couple preparing for the arrival of their first child. Just weeks before their due date they discover that their son has died in the womb and will be stillborn. 

Return to Zero Netflix


Podcasts

Wondery Podcast

Dr. Death

We’re at our most vulnerable when we go to our doctors. We trust the person at the other end of that scalpel. We trust the hospital. We trust the system.

About Dr. Death

Dr. Christopher Duntsch was a neurosurgeon who radiated confidence. He claimed he was the best in Dallas. If you had back pain, and had tried everything else, Dr. Duntsch could give you the spine surgery that would take your pain away. But soon his patients started to experience complications. And all they had to protect them was a system ill equipped to stop the madness.

From Wondery, the network behind the hit podcast Dirty John, DR. DEATH is about a medical system that failed to protect these patients at every possible turn. Reported and hosted by Laura Beil.

Read our discussion guide with review questions!


From Conscience to Robots: Practical Ethics Workshops

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/conscience-robots-practical-ethics-workshops

This series includes conferences and workshops organised by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics on a range of topics from conscientious objection in healthcare, science and religious conflict, cyberselves, digital ethics and many others.


Netflix

Unrest – The Movie

Unrest Discussion Page

Jennifer Brea is about to marry the love of her life when she’s struck down by a fever that leaves her bedridden. When doctors tell her “it’s all in her head,” she turns her camera on herself and her community as she looks for answers and fights for a cure.


 

HBO Documentary (available on Cravetv)

Coma (2007) Documentary  

Coma (2007) Documentary – Discussion Questions

Coma is a movie starring Lynda Delorenzo, Al’Khan Edwards, and Devonia Edwards. Al’Khan, Roxanne, Sean, and Tom have each emerged from their Traumatic Brain Injury comas, but just how conscious are they, and will they get better?


YouTube

Empathy by Brené Brown and Brené Brown on Empathy Discussion Sheet

Blame by Brené Brown and Brené Brown on Blame Discussion Sheet

Governments Passing Laws for Robots by The Young Turks and Electronic  Personhood Discussion Sheet


Netflix

Netflix – Concussion and Concussion – Discussion Questions

Netflix – The Girl With All The Gifts and The Girl With All The Gifts Discussion Questions

Netflix – Black Mirror – Season 3 – Episode San Junipero

Netflix – Extremis and Discussion Sheet for Extremis

                                              Netflix – House – Season 3 – Informed Consent

                                              Netflix – Dr. Feelgood and Dr. Feelgood Documentary Discussion Questions


Podcasts

Robot Uteruses and the Quest to End Unintended Pregnancy – Podcast

Robot Uteruses and the Quest to End Unintended Pregnancy – Discussion Questions

A robotic pelvis, a federal policy, and a huge shift in birth control access.

The Current on CBC RADIO

Why U.K. Doctors are Doling Out ‘Social Prescriptions’ to Treat Mental Health

Why U.K. Doctors are Doling Out ‘Social Prescriptions’ to Treat Mental Health – Discussion Questions

This episode of the Current focuses on the use of social prescribing in family medicine in the U.K. As an alternative to prescribing pharmaceuticals, family doctors in the U.K. are increasingly prescribing non-medical services.

Medical Scribes Podcast

Medical Scribes Podcast (Discussion Page)

Canadian doctors are starting to hire scribes to write up their medical charts By doing so they can focus on patients and improve their efficiency. We explore the introduction of medical scribes in Canada and how they will impact the way doctors work. 14:45

                                 How Long Have I Got? Take A Blood Test

                                                Discussion sheet for How Long Have I Got?

EthicsLab Podcast – The Future of Healthcare Ethics

Podcast – The Future of Health Care Ethics Discussion Questions

Tune in to this latest episode of the EthicsLab podcast! In this episode EthicsLab talks with international leaders in ethics about the future of healthcare ethics.

NPR – Could You Kill A Robot?

Could You Kill A Robot Discussion Questions

Will we one day create machines that are essentially just like us? People have been wrestling with that question since the advent of robotics. But maybe we’re missing another, even more intriguing question: what can robots teach us about ourselves?


Movies

Hold Me (The Movie) 

Hold Me (Discussion Page)

Hold Me is the story of an end of life caregiver struggling with grief as she works holding and consoling people being voluntarily euthanized in the parts of the United States where doctor assisted dying is not yet legal.


If you have any suggestions on shows, films or podcasts, please contact the NSHEN Administrator