Ruth B. Purtilo, PT, PhD, FAPTA

Ruth Purtilo began her professional career as a physical therapy clinician employed in long-term rehabilitation environments. Her subsequent experience in diverse societal and cultural settings awakened a desire to help prepare health professions students for the larger clinical, social and cultural challenges they would face. One path to such a goal opened through the emerging field of medical ethics. She enrolled in Harvard University Divinity School to complete a master's degree, then transferred to its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to obtain a PhD. She graduated having gained a solid foundation in religious and philosophic traditions of ethics along with ample exposure to key legal, humanistic and social-sciences studies relevant to healthcare practices and policies. Her career as a healthcare ethicist—educator, consultant, author and member of several national and international health policy initiatives—now spans over 40 years, many with a focus on rehabilitation. She is professor emerita in Interprofessional Studies at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, where she has served in several capacities and as director of its Ethics Initiative. She is also a professor emerita at Creighton University, Omaha, where she directed the multidisciplinary Center for Health Policy and Ethics. Dr. Purtilo holds five honorary degrees for her contributions to healthcare ethics. In 1991, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Harvard Divinity School; in 1983, she was awarded the Nellie Westerman Prize by the American Federation for Clinical Research for her article predicting major ethical and social issues that the (then) new disease called AIDS would create. She is a Catherine Worthingham Fellow and McMillan Scholar of the American Physical Therapy Association. She has been an awardee of two National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Scholars summer institute awards. She also has received two Greenwall Foundation grants: one to study moral courage among South African health and other professionals during the apartheid years; the other for an international initiative on ethical and philosophic foundations for palliative care in Alzheimer disease. Dr. Purtilo is the author of six books and more than 100 articles. She is the founding author of two textbooks (which reflect how over time she took on co-authors to help keep important material up-to-date, and to enrich content): Health Professional and Patient Interaction (10th ed in prep, Amy Haddad, primary author); and Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions (8th ed in prep, Regina Doherty, primary author). She is co-editor (with Gail Jensen and Charlotte Royeen) of Educating for Moral Action: a Sourcebook in Health and Rehabilitation Ethics, and co-editor (with Henk AMJ ten Have) of Ethical Foundations of Palliative Care for Alzheimer Disease. She served as an area editor for the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, revised ed. She is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, an internationally-recognized ethics think-tank in Garrison, New York.