Nancy Berlinger is a Research Scholar at The Hastings Center, an independent, nonprofit bioethics research institute located in Garrison, New York. Her research and teaching interests focus on health care ethics, ethics policy in public health, and patient safety. Special interests in health care ethics include end-of-life care, palliative care, cancer as a chronic illness, and organizational ethics in community health centers. Special interests in public health and ethics policy include human rights, pandemic planning, and immunization refusal. Special interests in patient safety include the resolution of medical harm.

Ms. Berlinger is the director of the first revision of The Hastings Center’s 1987 ethics guidelines on end-of-life care, and co-directs a project on undocumented patients. Her current book project is on the ethics of “avoidance” – workarounds, turfing, and other practices – in health care organizations. She teaches a graduate seminar in health care ethics at the Yale School of Nursing and lectures frequently in medical schools and health care institutions in the United States and internationally.

She is a graduate of Smith College and holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. 

Last updated July 29, 2011.