Farr A. Curlin
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Associate Faculty, MacLean Center for
Clinical Medical Ethics
The University of Chicago
Director,
Chicago Program on Spirituality, Theology and Clinical Decision-Making
Internal Medicine Residency, The University of Chicago
M.D.
University of North Carolina
B.A. University of North Carolina
Farr A. Curlin, MD, is a general internist, medical ethicist, and Director for the newly founded Chicago Program on Spirituality, Theology and Clinical Decision-Making, at the University of Chicago. Dr. Curlin received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then moved to the University of Chicago where he completed internal medicine residency, two years as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, and a one-year fellowship in the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. He joined the University faculty in 2003.
Dr. Curlin’s scholarship focuses on the relation of religion to the practice of medicine. His empirical research describes the influence of physicians' religious traditions and commitments (and their secular analogues) on physicians' clinical practices. His analytical scholarship engages questions regarding whether and in what ways physicians' religious commitments ought to shape their clinical practices. With respect to the latter, he is particularly concerned with the moral dimensions of medical practice and the doctor-patient relationship, and with moral formation in medical education.
Dr. Curlin and colleagues have completed several empirical studies and authored numerous manuscripts published in the medicine and bioethics literatures. He is currently editing a special issue devoted to the relation of conscience and conscientiousness to the practice of medicine (forthcoming, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics).
As founding Director of the Chicago Program on Spirituality, Theology and Clinical Decision-Making, Dr. Curlin is working with colleagues to develop one of the world’s only university-based centers focused on inquiry into and public discourse regarding the intersections of medicine, ethics and the religious traditions.
