Nancy Berlinger

Nancy Berlinger, a research scholar, focuses on ethical challenges in health care work and on related areas of professional education and health policy in the United States and internationally. Special interests include treatment decision-making and care near the end of life; ethical issues in the management of chronic illnesses, including cancer; access to health care for undocumented immigrants and migrant workers; and the ethics of workarounds and other practices for managing problems of safety and harm in health care systems.

She directed the research project that produced a revised and expanded edition of The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life (2013) and is the first author of the new Guidelines. She is also the author of After Harm: Medical Error and the Ethics of Forgiveness (2005). With scholars at The Hastings Center and at Oxford University, she is working with the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore to develop an innovative Web-based ethics casebook on medical decision-making in Asian social contexts. She teaches health care ethics at Yale University School of Nursing.

Her research products are featured on two public Web sites of The Hastings Center: