Lecture Asks “What Makes Healthcare Relationships Therapeutic?”

Feb. 27, 2013 — Larry R. Churchill, the 
Ann Geddes Stahlman Chair of Medical Ethics at 
Vanderbilt University, will present the Lehman Medical Ethics Lecture 
at Allegheny College at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, March 4, in the Quigley Hall Auditorium.

The public is invited to this free lecture, titled “What Makes Healthcare Relationships Therapeutic? 
A Study of Clinician and Patient Perspectives.”

Churchill also holds appointments in the Vanderbilt Divinity School and in the Department of Philosophy. Prior to Vanderbilt, Churchill was professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Educated at Rhodes College and Duke University, where he earned an M.Div. and Ph.D., Churchill entered the field of medical ethics and humanities as a member of the first class of Fellows of the Institute for Human Values in Medicine in 1973-74.

He has published widely in several areas of medical ethics, including research with human subjects, end of life decision-making, and social justice and the ethics of U.S. health policy. He has authored or co-authored a number of major works, including “Professional Ethics and Primary Care Medicine,” “Rationing Health Care in America,” “Self-Interest and Universal Health Care,” “Ethical Dimensions of Health Policy” and “Healers: Extraordinary Clinicians at Work.”

Churchill is co-editor and contributor to the widely used textbook that relates the humanities and social sciences to medicine and health care, “The Social Medicine Reader.” He is also co-editor of the UNC Press series “Studies in Social Medicine.”

During 2003-2004 Churchill was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Use of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and he was the chief author of the chapter in the Committee Report, Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States, “An Ethical Framework for CAM Research, Policy and Practice.”

In 1999 Churchill was honored for excellence in teaching medical students at UNC. He is also a member of Vanderbilt’s Academy for Excellence in Teaching.

From 1995 to 2005 Churchill was engaged with projects funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute on informed consent and gene transfer research. Since 2005 he has been involved in qualitative empirical studies of the relationships between clinicians and their patients, with emphasis on the elements of that interaction that carry therapeutic significance.

A major current focus is on how to translate knowledge of such healing skills into medical education and practice, including how to devise models and paradigms for ethics that actually reflect the moral life of humans, rather than academic ideals.

Churchill’s lecture is made possible 
through the generous gifts of 
John W. Lehman, M.D., who graduated from Allegheny College in 1954, and Deborah J. Lehman.

For more information, contact Kirsten Peterson, director of pre-professional studies at Allegheny College,
 at 814-332-2845 or kirsten.peterson@allegheny.edu.