Ethicist Ruth Purtilo to Speak at Springfield College Greene Memorial Lecture in Physical Therapy
March 14, 2007SPRINGFIELD, Mass., March 14, 2007 – Springfield College announced today that medical ethicist Ruth B. Purtilo, Ph.D., ethics initiative director at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions (MGHIHP), will speak at the Greene Memorial Lecture in Physical Therapy on Friday, March 23, at 1:30 p.m. The annual free public lecture will be held in the Townhouse Conference Room at Springfield College. It is the premiere scholarly event of the college’s Physical Therapy Department.
Purtilo, a former member of the Clinton Health Care Task Force, also is a clinical professor at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Neb. She will speak on “The Trek from Physical Therapist to Ethicist-Scholar: Why I Set Out, How I Packed for the Journey, Who I Found as Guides, and What I Discovered in My (Continuing) Adventure along a Road Less Traveled.”
“I have pursued many different topics of social and professional concern during my 30 years as an ethicist,” Purtilo said. “A major portion of my efforts have been directed to chronic illness and long-term care and challenges arising from the team-oriented organization of health-care services…I have also had a longstanding commitment to issues of distributive justice and problems of discrimination against socially marginalized groups,” she added.
Purtilo has held many ethics positions including MGHIHP ethicist-in-residence and its first Henry Knox Sherrill professor of medical ethics. She has been chairperson and professor at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine’s Department of Medical Jurisprudence and Humanities, and professor of community and family medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass. She is a fellow at the Hastings Center in Garrison, N.Y., and past president of the Society for Health and Human Values and the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics.
Following the lecture, Purtilo will conduct a question and answer session. The Greene Lectureship was endowed in memory of Jean Greene by her husband, Edwin Greene, who graduated from Springfield College in 1935. Springfield College offers a six and a half year combined bachelor of science and doctoral degree program in physical therapy through its School of Health Sciences & Rehabilitation Studies. Additional information is available from Cindy Moriarty at (413) 748-3590.
