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Noël-Mailloux Chair

in ethics of care

The Noël-Mailloux Chair in Ethics of Care is a university centre for research, training and expertise in bioethics, specializing in the ethics of end-of-life care. She is part of the Dominican Center for Ethics and Spiritual Life (CDEVS) at the Dominican University College (CUD). It proposes an approach for caregivers that combines ethical reflection and attention to the spiritual dimension of care by calling on the resources of the Christian tradition.

The care of frail people, especially at the end of life, has become very technical and bureaucratic in North America and particularly in Quebec. Care is marked by a logic of urgency, efficiency and profitability. There is less and less time for presence and relationship. There are many stakeholders and care is becoming specialized to the detriment of more comprehensive care. The social and multicultural context leads to a multiplication of values that may conflict. This can obscure caregivers’ usual reference points and increase their uncertainty about what is right in caring. This can also lead to a loss of the meaning of care and cause caregivers to lose their breath in their practice as the relational dimension of care is evacuated.

In response to these issues, the Chair in Care Ethics aims to help caregivers to:

To give meaning to their caregiving practice.

    • Strengthen their capacity for ethical discernment, particularly in complex situations.
    • Acquire reflective and practical tools to humanize care.
    • To be better involved in the relational/spiritual dimension of care.
    • Revitalize their engagement in the caregiving relationship.
    • Training in ethical deliberation in clinical or research situations.

The Chair in the Ethics of Care also aims to help people working in the accompaniment of people at the end of life (spiritual care workers, volunteers in palliative care, in nursing homes, members of associations for the accompaniment of the end of life) to :

    • Rediscovering meaning in the accompaniment of people at the end of life by helping them to name what they are already doing in practice.
    • Conduct an ethical and spiritual review of their practice of accompanying people at the end of life.
    • To reinvigorate and energize their commitment to people at the end of life.
    • Confront the challenges of accompanying people at the end of life, including those posed by requests for medical assistance in dying. 

Co-holder of the chair: 

Didier Caenepeel, O.P. 

Brother Didier Caenepeel has been a professor of moral theology and bioethics for 17 years at CUD, with experience in clinical ethics in health care institutions, particularly in psychiatry. 

Thomas de Gabory, O.P.

  has been a professor of moral theology and bioethics for 17 years at CUD, with experience in clinical ethics in health care institutions, particularly in psychiatry.  has been a professor of moral theology and bioethics for 17 years at CUD, with experience in clinical ethics in health care institutions, particularly in psychiatry.