Farr Curlin, MD

Dr. Curlin is a hospice and palliative care physician who joined Duke University in January 2014 where he holds joint appointments in the School of Medicine, including its Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine, and in Duke Divinity School, including its Initiative on Theology, Medicine and Culture. He works with Duke colleagues to foster scholarship, study, and training regarding the intersections of medicine, ethics, and religion. After graduating from medical school, he completed internal medicine residency training and fellowships in both health services research and clinical ethics at the University of Chicago before joining its faculty in 2003. Dr. Curlin’s empirical research charts the influence of physicians' moral traditions and commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians' clinical practices. As an ethicist, he addresses questions regarding whether and in what ways physicians' religious commitments ought to shape their clinical practices in a plural democracy. Dr. Curlin and colleagues have authored numerous manuscripts published in medicine and bioethics literature, including a New England Journal of Medicine paper titled, “Religion, Conscience and Controversial Clinical Practices.” He is particularly concerned with the moral and spiritual dimensions of medical practice and the doctor-patient relationship, and with the moral and professional formation of physicians. His areas of expertise are medicine, medical ethics, doctor-patient relationship, religion and medicine, and conscience. At the University of Chicago, Dr. Curlin founded and was co-director of the Program on Medicine and Religion.