- Titles:
- Lillian S. Brunner Chair in Medical and Surgical Nursing
- Professor of Nursing
- Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy
- Education:
- The University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Nursing, PhD
- The Catholic University of America, MSN
- The Catholic University of America, BSN
Connie M. Ulrich, PhD, RN, FAAN, is an Associate Professor of Bioethics and Nursing in the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Dr. Ulrich also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine and is the Associate Director of the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. Currently, she also serves as the Graduate Group Director of PhD Studies at the School of Nursing (2014-2016).
Dr. Ulrich received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Catholic University of America and her PhD with a concentration in nursing ethics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She was the first nurse to be awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in bioethics at the National Institutes of Health where she received training in both clinical and research ethics.
Dr. Ulrich conducts both conceptual and empirical bioethics research, nationally and internationally. Her publications in clinical ethics focus on clinician moral distress, ethics education, and patient-provider communication. Her work has shown the importance of an ethical climate as well as ethics preparedness and confidence of nurses and other providers related to their overall job satisfaction and intention to remain in their positions. Her research ethics publications include work on the risks and benefits in cancer clinical trials and how cancer patients view their research participation, respondent burden in research, informed consent, international ethical issues, and scientific integrity. She is currently working with colleagues from Dartmouth and Penn to develop bioethics scholarship in Tanzania among nurses and physicians. In addition, her work has advanced empirical bioethics instrumentation. She has published in medical, nursing and bioethics journals that include the Hastings Center Report, American Journal of Bioethics, Pediatrics, Nursing Research, and Journal of Advanced Nursing. She has also commented in the public media on ethical issues that impact nursing care, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times. She is the recipient of funding from various organizations, including the National Institutes of Health (National Institutes of Nursing Research), the Pennsylvania Health Research Formula Funds Research Grant/Oncology Nursing Society, the RWJ: Future of Nurse Scholars program and others.
Dr. Ulrich is currently the Lead Co-Chair of the Bioethics Expert Panel, American Academy of Nursing of which she reestablished in 2013. She also currently serves on several Data and Safety Monitoring Boards appointed by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Ulrich is the editor of Nursing Ethics in Everyday Practice. Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.
Dr. Ulrich teaches Bioethics to the second-degree nursing students in the School of Nursing and serves on several doctoral student committees. She also co-teaches with her bioethics colleagues in the School of Medicine. Dr. Ulrich is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and a Salzburg Global Fellow.