About the Center - Overview
In 1984, the University of Chicago established the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics through the generous support of Dorothy J. MacLean and the MacLean family. The MacLean Center was the nation’s first program devoted to clinical medical ethics, and it remains the leading center for the teaching and study of clinical ethics. In the three years that U.S. News and World Report ranked U.S. ethics programs, the MacLean Center was chosen in each year as the #1 ethics program in the United States. Since then, the MacLean Center has become the largest program in clinical ethics in the world, a program that now has an endowment of over $20 million and includes five endowed professorial chairs in medical ethics.
Our distinguished faculty members are involved in all aspects of Center activity. Faculty is drawn from the departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Surgery, Obstetrics-Gynecology, and Psychiatry, with adjunct faculty from the Law School, the Graduate School of Business, the Harris School of Public Policy, and the Divisions of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. MacLean faculty members are extremely active academically, having published more than 20 books and numerous peer-reviewed articles in leading medical and ethics journals.
Since 1986, the MacLean Center has directed a renowned ethics fellowship program. More than 250 fellows have been trained at the MacLean Center, many of whom now direct ethics programs in the US, Canada, and Europe. Most fellows have been physicians, but we have also trained nurses, legal scholars, theologians, and philosophers. We are also pleased to announce a new partnership with the United States Veterans Administration hospital system, through which three VA medical professionals per year are selected through a national search to participate in our ethics training program. Former fellows have published more than 50 books in the field. Thirty of our past fellows now direct ethics programs in hospitals and research centers in the United States, Canada and Europe. Twenty former fellows are now full professors at academic institutions, and eight hold endowed professorial chairs.
The Center is also actively engaged in the instruction of medical ethics for both medical students and other members of the University of Chicago community. The required first-year Pritzker School of Medicine course, The Doctor-Patient Relationship, is consistently ranked by students as one of the best pre-clinical medical school courses. At the undergraduate college level, some of our faculty teach courses in the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine (HIPS) curriculum, as well as an interdisciplinary course through the College’s “Big Problems” program titled “Autonomy and Medical Paternalism”.
The Center is deeply involved with clinical medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Since 1984, the Center has provided a hospital-wide ethics consultation service to help clinicians navigate medical-ethical dilemmas arising in clinical practice. Since its inception, the ethics service has provided consultation for more than 2,000 cases.
The MacLean Center strives to address medical-ethical issues from multidisciplinary perspectives. Each year, the Center directs and co-sponsors several innovative conferences and workshops at the University of Chicago. In the past, these conferences have included joint conferences with the Law School and the Harris School of Public Policy, year-long interdisciplinary faculty seminars, in addition to an annual MacLean Center Fellows’ Reunion Conference. These events draw speakers and audiences from a wide range of disciplines.