- Titles:
- Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics & Health Policy
- Education:
- Harvard Medical School, MD
- Harvard College, AB
My research interests in medical ethics have evolved over the past 20 years. As a board-certified pulmonologist and critical care specialist, my earlier interests were clinical ethics issues related to end of life decision making, allocation of scare resources, and end of life care. I was the chair or co-chair of three bioethics task forces of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) that wrote official ATS clinical guidelines or policies for Forgoing Life Support, Allocation of Scarce Resources and Integrating Palliative Care into Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
As a Module Leader and Associate Dean for Professinalism and Humanism, I have been able to successfully design and implement a 4-year integrated curriculum for medical students at Perelman SOM that supports their professional development, including stand alone courses in medical ethics in the first and fourth years. In 2007 I was one of five Gold Humanism Honor Society National Honorees.
After the tragedy of Jesse Gelsinger, a subject in a gene transfer experiment at Penn, I designed and directed a required introductory course related to research ethics, including the Gelsinger case, during the first year of medical school. I am currently focused on improving medical education and am leading a NIH NIDA-funded research team of medical educators from Penn's and Drexel's schools of medicine, in which we are testing the efficacy of novel educational interventions to enhance positive attitudes towards caring for, and communicating with, patients with substance use disorders - issues falling within the medical professionalism realm.
More recently, I am leading a NIH NIDA-funded research team of medical educators from Penn's and Drexel's schools of medicine, in which we are testing the efficacy of novel educational interventions to enhance positive attitudes towards caring for, and communicating with, patients with substance use disorders - issues falling within the medical professionalism realm. The medical education intervention includes using the following NIDA-sponsored online module, The Clinical Assessment of Substance Use Disorders.