Ineffective, Inconsequential, or Disproportionately Harmful?: Drawing Critical Moral Distinctions in Determinations of Contraindicated Interventions

January 29, 2026
1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Berkshire Health Systems
Bishop Clapp Building
725 North Street
Pittsfield, MA 01201

In this workshop, participants will be able to identify and manage the moral distress inevitably experienced in cases where patients/families who request life-sustaining interventions that should generally be provided them unless those interventions are objectively ineffective (ie, cannot, either by design or effect, fulfill the purpose for which they are applied), inconsequential (ie, cannot change the outcome or the relative timing of the outcome), and/or disproportionately harmful (ie, causing gross harm out of which an equal or greater clinical good can not be derived). This moves participants away from overused and unclear terms such as “nonbeneficial” and “futile” — concepts that are very poorly defined in the literature and often subjective in bedside application. Participants will also be able to provide patient-centered bioethics mediation (including the use of organized and precise language) in circumstances of persistent disagreement between providers and patients/families.

Presenter
Peter A. DePergola II, PhD, MTS, HEC-C, CT

Dr. Peter DePergola is Chief Ethics Officer, Senior Director of Clinical Ethics, Chief of the Ethics Consultation Service, Chair of the Ethics Advisory Committee, and Director of the Clinical and Organizational Rotations in Ethics (CORE) Programs at Baystate Health. He serves concurrently as the Shaughness Family Chair for the Study of the Humanities, Associate Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities (with joint appointments in Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Biomedical Sciences), Director of the Undergraduate and Graduate Bioethics and Medical Humanities Programs, and Executive Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Saint Augustine Center for Ethics, Religion, and Culture at Elms College. Dr. DePergola holds secondary academic and research appointments at more than a dozen additional universities, associations, institutes, academies, and societies.

In addition to Dr. DePergola’s system-wide clinical, research, organizational, and academic responsibilities at Baystate Health, he serves as Ethicist-in-Residence to the Institutional Review Boards, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and Organ Donation and Allocation Committee. In 2013, Dr. DePergola became the organization’s first full-time clinical bioethicist, where he has since developed innovative, nationally-recognized policy related to public health pandemics, resource scarcity, and end-of-life care. In 2017, he became the youngest senior leader in the 140-year history of Baystate Health.

Agenda

Learning Objectives

1. Select the relevant questions of moral analysis and moral reasoning in the context of life-sustaining interventions.
2. Analyze three common ethics consultations involving life-sustaining interventions.
3. Explain the difference between ineffective, inconsequential, and disproportionately harmful interventions.
4. Describe methods by which bioethics mediation can assist clinicians in managing difficult conversations at the end of life

AMA PRA Category 1 Credits^TM for this program are being administered by Berkshire Health Systems.

Other Accreditations