Arthur R. Derse, MD, JD

Professor and Director, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities

Julia and David Uihlein Chair in Medical Humanities and

Professor of Bioethics and Emergency Medicine

Director, MCW Medical Humanities Program

Dr. Arthur Derse is the Director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities in the Institute for Health & Equity, Julia and David Uihlein Chair in Medical Humanities, and Professor of Bioethics and Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Dr. Derse is member of the board of the American Society for Law, Medicine and Ethics (ASLME) and of the board of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD). He is a member and past chair of the Ethics Committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). He serves on the Administrative Board of the Council for Faculty and Societies (CFAS) of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). He is fellow of the Hastings Center.

He is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), and former chair of the National Ethics Committee of the Veterans Health Administration, He served as Senior Consultant for Academic Affairs at the American Medical Association’s Institute for Ethics and as a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging. He served on ASBH’s Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs Committee and its Quality Attestation Presidential Task Force.

His educational activities include oversight of the MCW's medical ethics curriculum and direction of graduate school courses encompassing law and bioethics, and ethics consultation. He co-directs MCW’s Bioethics Scholarly Pathway. He also directs two of the medical school's medical humanities elective courses. He is a member of the Culture and Systems Pillar of the Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education. He directed the school's former second-year required Medical Ethics and Palliative Medicine course for 15 years.

Dr. Derse serves as ethics committee chair at Froedtert Hospital (the adult university hospital of the Medical College of Wisconsin) and ethics consultant for the Milwaukee VA Hospital and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

His publication and research have focused on emergency medicine and ethics, law and bioethics, informed consent, end-of-life decision making, confidentiality and the doctor-patient relationship. He is co-author of the Code of Ethics of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and Practical Ethics for Students, Interns and Residents: A Short Reference Manual, 4th Edition. He is also co-author of the Education on Palliative and End of Life Care (EPEC) Curriculum, as well as the EPEC curriculum designed for emergency physicians (EPEC-EM) and serves as a member of their advisory boards and national faculty. He has over 130 publications, including articles in the peer-reviewed literature, invited journal publications, editorials, book chapters, project publications, and books, and has given over 250 national and international presentations.

Dr. Derse serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Bioethics, the Journal of Clinical Ethics, and the Journal of Ethics. He is the founder and moderator of the MCW Bioethics Discussion Forum, a nationally recognized academic online discussion group.

He has been interviewed by The New York Times, NBC’s Dateline, NPR’s Morning Edition, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic Magazine, Fox News, MSNBC, Fox Business News, Sirius-XM Radio, The Christian Science Monitor, The Scientist, JAMA, BMJ, American Medical News, Family Practice News, ASCO Connection, Wired News, Hippocrates Magazine, and New York Public Radio (WNYC-FM), The Wisconsin State Journal, Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee NPR (WUWM-FM) and Milwaukee PBS.