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Ruth B. Purtilo, PhD, FAPTA
Contributed-Service Faculty, School of Medicine
PhD, 1979, Harvard University
MTS, 1975, Harvard University
BS, 1964, University of Minnesota
Dr. Ruth Purtilo
Director, Ethics Initiative, Suite 266
MGH Institute of Health Professions
36 First Avenue CNY
Boston, MA 02129
(617) 726.6746 tel
rpurtilo@mghihp.edu
Biography
In October 2004, Dr. Ruth Purtilo joined the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions as the Ethics Initiative Director. She continues to hold a Faculty position in the Creighton University School of Medicine as a Clinical Professor.
As a Creighton University Medical Center Professor in 1991, she joined the Center for Health Policy and Ethics and later became its second Director in 1994.
Before coming to Creighton, she held ethics positions as the first Henry Knox Sherrill Professor of Medical Ethics at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Institute of Health Professions and Ethicist-in-Residence at MGH, Boston, Massachusetts; Visiting Scholar in Medical Ethics at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; Chairperson and Professor, Department of Medical Jurisprudence and Humanities, University of Nebraska College of Medicine, Omaha, Nebraska; and Associate Professor of Community and Family Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. Dr. Purtilo is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, in Garrison, New York. She is a past President of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics (1992-93) and the Society for Health and Human Values (now the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities). She served on the Clinton Health Care Task Force in the spring of 1993.
Dr. Purtilo holds four honorary degrees: a Doctor of Humane Letters from Misericordia College in Dallas, Pennsylvania (2001); a Doctor of Science Degree from Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Service in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1998); a Doctor of Science Degree from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York (1995); and a Doctor of Humane Letters Degree from Florida International University, Miami, Florida (1993). In 1991 she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Harvard Divinity School. In 1983 she was awarded the Nellie Westerman Prize in Medical Ethics by the American Federation for Clinical Research for her article predicting some major ethical issues that the (then) new disease called AIDS would create. She is a Catherine Worthingham Fellow and MacMillan Scholar of the American Physical Therapy Association.
Dr. Purtilo is the author of six books and more than 90 articles. Among her books are Health Professional-Patient Interaction (7th Edition, co-authored with Amy Haddad, PhD) and Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions (4th Ed). She served as an area editor for the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, rev. ed. (1996).
Dr. Purtilo's primary research interests include rehabilitation ethics; ethical issues in human transplantation; interdisciplinary health care teams; and ethical issues in health care reform and managed care.
"I have pursued many different topics of social and
professional concern during my 30 years as an ethicist. However,
a major portion of my efforts have been directed to chronic
illness and long term care and challenges arising from the
team-oriented organization of health care services. In the last
several years my attention has turned to how these issues have
been affected by our evolving health care system, particularly
by managed care arrangements."
"I have also had a long-standing commitment to issues of
distributive justice and problems of discrimination against
socially marginalized groups."
Snapshot
View of Snapshot of Dr. Purtilo's work:
Ethical Challenges
Emerging from Genetic Labels applied to Disabilities [PDF]