Great programs are going on at Carolina Meadows every week, but I am ready to nominate one of them as the “best new thing.” Carolina Meadows University (CMU), which began last year, is a new format that adds “short courses” to a calendar of great regular programs, including lectures and seminars. These short courses drew standing-room-only crowdslast year.

This year, we launched the Fall Semesterwith a remarkable three-part course on Medical Ethics, taught by Carolina Meadows resident and retired pediatric neurosurgeon, David Klein, M.D.  Among his many volunteer roles here in North Carolina, Dr. Klein has served on the ethics boards of University of North Carolina Hospitals and the North Carolina State Medical Society. His course addressed the entire spectrum of medical ethics considerations.  For each session, he assembled a panel of experts from Carolina Meadows and elsewhere. Using the case method, participants considered a dozen fascinating scenarios, ranging from the irate father who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer to the mother threatening suicide if there was an interruption in her daughter’s care.

At our last meeting, Dr. Klein turned our attention to the dilemma of limited resources and how to allocate those in equitable, patient-sensitive, and beneficent ways. Among other things, we studied the example of the remarkable new Oregon Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC) within the framework of distributive justice.

Typically, audience discussion is an important part of such events, and this was no exception. As a moderator and as a panelist, I was astonished and delighted to hear truly challenging and incisive questions, suggestions, and comments from our neighbors. We are all benefitting from the wealth of experience in this community.