The 2007 Thelma Shobe Lecture

Spirituality, Medicine, Ethics: Uneasy Partners
Margaret E. Mohrmann, MD, PhD
UCSF Parnassus Campus, Room #HSW-302
Thursday, March 22, 2007, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Full Text of the 2007 Thelma Shobe Lecture (.pdf)
"Spirituality, Medicine, Ethics: Uneasy Partners"

Speaker's Biography

Margaret E. Mohrmann, MD, PhD
Harrison Medical Teaching Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Associate Professor of Medical Education
University of Virginia

Dr. Mohrmann is a graduate of the College of Charleston (BS, 1969) and the Medical University of South Carolina (MD, 1973).  After completing her residency in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Hospitals, she returned to MUSC, where she was director of the residency program in pediatrics, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit, and taught ethics and clinical reasoning to first- and second-year medical students.  In 1987, Dr. Mohrmann came to the University of Virginia as a doctoral student in religious ethics (and a part-time teacher and practitioner of primary care pediatrics), receiving her PhD in 1995.

She currently holds joint appointments at UVA in the School of Medicine (Program of Humanities in Medicine) and the College of Arts & Sciences (Department of Religious Studies). In the School of Medicine, Dr. Mohrmann is an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Biomedical Ethics, director of the Spirituality and Medicine Curriculum, coordinator of the Clinical Reflection program for third-year medical students, and a member of the medical school admissions committee. In the Department of Religious Studies, she directs the undergraduate bioethics internship seminar and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of Christian ethics and in feminist thought, among other subjects.

Dr. Mohrmann has received numerous teaching awards from medical students and residents, both at MUSC and at UVA, including the 1999 UVA School of Medicine Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching.  She is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the Raven Society (the oldest honorary service organization at UVA), and Omicron Delta Kappa.  In 1988, the College of Charleston bestowed upon her the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa.

Based on her interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of ethics, religion, and medicine, Dr. Mohrmann is in demand nationally as a speaker to a variety of audiences, including physicians, medical students, nurses, theologians, chaplains, and lay persons. She is the author of Medicine As Ministry: Reflections on Suffering, Ethics, and Hope (Pilgrim Press, 1995) and co-editor of Pain Seeking Understanding: Suffering, Medicine, and Faith (Pilgrim Press, 1999).  She is also the narrator of a video, "The Way We Die: Listening to the Terminally Ill," used widely by hospice and AIDS support groups and in college courses on cultural understandings of death. Recent publications include "Professing Medicine Faithfully: Theological Resources for Trying Times," in Theology Today, October, 2002, and an essay on historical understandings of integrity within Christian ethics, which will appear in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics late in 2004. Her third book, Attending Children: A Doctor's Education, will be published by Georgetown University Press in Spring 2005.