Jeff Flowers retired as the Director of the Pastoral Care Ministries after 30 years of faithful service to Augusta University Medical Center. Dr. Flowers has been an indefatigable supporter and leader in literally all ethics initiatives at AU for the last three decades. He built the pastoral care department from just himself to dozens of chaplains, chaplain assistants and countless volunteers. He spearheaded and led an advanced directive initiative that spanned more than a decade, resulting in the completion of thousands of advance directives. He was the singular face of palliative care for 20 years, facilitating countless end of life and goals of care conversations with patients and families. He instructed hundreds of medical students in a palliative care intersession curriculum at MCG. As a founding member of the ethics committee, he was one of the lead ethics consultants for AU health for more than 2 decades, helping to resolve the stickiest of ethical dilemmas at the bedside.

Dr. Flowers is known institution wide for his depth of compassion, overflowing grace in difficult relational situations and an eternal optimist in the most challenging of circumstances. He developed a pastoral care rotation where medical students in the Leadership through Ethics Program shadowed him and other pastors during their hospital rounds. His work was instrumental in demonstrating compassionate, loving care to patients and families and teaching the next generation of physicians how to demonstrate these qualities. His efforts were showcased in studies published in Academic Medicine and Medical Teacher in 2021. In the past 2 years, he developed the No One Dies Alone Program, getting students and other volunteers to be at the bedside of dying persons who have no human connections outside the facility. In the twilight of his career, he developed a listening ear program for our tired healthcare professionals with moral distress amongst the COVID pandemic. Jeff Flowers’ life work at Augusta University has truly made him a hero in healthcare ethics.

The Grady Ethics Committee has been active in one form or another for over 35 years. During that time, the Committee has been a trend setter and institutional leader in hospital-based bioethics. This institutional leadership in bioethics spans the traditional committee roles of consultation, education, and organizational ethics - while modeling the role of paid, organizational bioethicists as a seminal ethics leaders around which the hospital-based ethics committee rallies.

A few Grady ethics highlights:

• First ethics committee to offer formal consultation—circa 1991;
• System with one of the first certified bioethicists in Healthcare Ethics Consultation in Georgia;
• Has consistently done greater than 300 consultations per year for the past several years;
• Developed and continues to run tracking system for high-risk services for ethics consultation;
• Worked with various state agencies (e.g., Adult Protective Services) to develop process to address end-of-life care for patients without family or identified decision maker.
• Members of the committee have worked to develop faculty, trainee and graduate student training programs to develop skills in community and legislative advocacy;
• Bioethicist on staff to assist with consultation and education around some of Georgia’s most vulnerable patients with homelessness, mental illness, drug issues, infections (e.g., HIV, TB etc.).

The Grady Ethics Committee has clearly demonstrated a sustained, forward-looking and highly significant effort to support the Grady patients and to act as a role model in leading ethics efforts in the state of Georgia. Of special note is that when one considers the economic challenges, the political nature of Grady’s community role and the population which Grady services, the Grady Ethics Committee clearly is a leader across all areas of ethics committee function and is without doubt a HERO in bioethics in Atlanta, in Georgia, and indeed in the country.