Laura Roberts, MD
Dr. Laura Roberts is the Charles E. Kubly Professor & Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She founded and serves as Director of the Empirical Ethics Group, a multi-site, multidisciplinary research team devoted to exploring clinical ethical issues in medicine.
Dr. Roberts received fellowship training and served as the Director of Programs at the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago prior to her time in New Mexico. She has written extensively on innovations in medical ethics education and she guest-edited special issues on this topic for Academic Medicine in 1989 and Academic Psychiatry in 1996. Dr. Roberts is the recipient of two NARSAD Young Investigator Awards and has received several NIH-funded research grants, including a Career Scientist Award from the NIMH.
Through multiple avenues on local, regional and national levels, Dr. Roberts focuses on improving the care of people with serious illnesses. A valued teacher, she has received many honors and awards from medical students, residents and faculty colleagues. In her role as Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, she continues to teach, present, and publish on topics related to ethics in physical and mental health care, research ethics, rural ethics, and medical education.
Her scholarly work has focused on six lines of conceptual and empirical study, all related to ethical issues in clinical care, research and education involving special populations. She has pursued a systematic, sequential elaboration of two themes: 1) clarifying the nature, determinants, predisposing features and ramifications of human vulnerability and strength; and 2) seeking to understand the relationship between experience, education and moral development. Dr. Roberts envisions that her scholarly life will continue to be dedicated to these related conceptual areas and to discovering ways to apply what she has learned in a sound manner within the profession of medicine.
Dr. Robert's work will always focus on the translation of concepts and observations (i.e., theory and data) into concrete, constructive interventions to enhance the experience of others. She believes that valuing and finding ethical meaning in the perspective of the individual, and then discovering the patterns present in groups of individuals, are special gifts that the field of psychiatry can bring to clinical ethics.