Farr A. Curlin

Curlin’s empirical research charts the influence of physicians' moral traditions and commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians' clinical practices. He and colleagues have completed a series of national studies that describe religion-associated variations in US physicians’ clinically relevant attitudes and practices across an array of clinical domains. The results of these studies have been published widely. Current research explores the moral and professional formation of physicians across the course of medical training.

 

Curlin’s normative scholarship addresses whether and in what ways physicians' religious commitments ought to shape their clinical practices in our plural democracy. He is particularly concerned with the ends of medicine and the moral dimensions of medical practice, clinical decision-making, and the doctor-patient relationship, as well as with moral formation in medical education. He actively participates in the clinical ethics consultations service and the intellectual collaborations of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. He has been a Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar in Bioethics, and in 2008 he gave expert testimony before the President’s Council on Bioethics regarding conscientious refusals by physicians (transcript here). He went on to edit a special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics titled, Conscience and Clinical Practice: Medical Ethics in the Face of Moral Controversy. He lectures widely about religion, conscience, and the moral and spiritual dimensions of the practice of medicine.

 

Dr. Curlin remains an active clinician, caring primarily for patients with advanced illness and at the end of life. He is associate medical director for Horizon Hospice and a member of the University of Chicago Palliative Care Consultation Service.