Arthur Derse, MD, JD
Professor of Bioethics and Emergency Medicine
Director for Medical and Legal Affairs, and Interim Director, Center for the Study of Bioethics
Director, MCW Medical Humanities Program
Dr. Arthur Derse is the Interim Director, and Director for Medical and Legal Affairs, for the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he also serves as Professor of Bioethics and Emergency Medicine and as Director of the Medical Humanities Program.
His educational activities include direction of the medical school's medical ethics course and several graduate school courses encompassing law, ethics education and ethics consultation. He also directs the medical school’s medical humanities course and Healer’s Art course.
Dr. Derse is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He is Chair of the National Ethics Committee of the Veterans Health Administration, Chair of the Ethics Committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians and Senior Consultant for Academic Affairs at the American Medical Association's Institute for Ethics. He serves on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging. He contributed to the development of the Education on Palliative and End of Life Care (EPEC) Project, as well as the EPEC curriculum designed for emergency physicians (EPEC-EM) and serves as a member of their advisory boards and national faculty.
Dr. Derse is chair of the ethics committee at Froedtert Hospital and ethics consultant for the Milwaukee VA Hospital and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. His publication and research includes emergency medicine and ethics, confidentiality, informed consent and treatment refusal, end-of-life decision making 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, 3rd Edition.
Dr. Derse serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Bioethics, the Journal of Clinical Ethics, the Medical Ethics Advisor and the Virtual Mentor. He is the founder and moderator of the MCW Bioethics Discussion Forum, a nationally recognized academic Internet discussion group. He is a recipient of the Gold Foundation’s Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award and was elected to the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Society of Teaching Scholars. He received the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities Distinguished Service Award.
Dr. Derse is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Medical School and the University of Wisconsin Law School, cum laude and he completed a fellowship in medical education at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
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