David J. Doukas, MD

I have held the William Ray Moore Endowed Chair of Family Medicine and Medical Humanism at the University of Louisville, and served as Professor of Family and Geriatric Medicine since 2004. Prior to accepting my current responsibilities, I served on the faculty of the Georgetown University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania, teaching and writing in the areas of professionalism, primary care bioethics, human genetics, and end-of-life decision-making.

I am interested in understanding the ethical implications of value judgments that patients and physicians use in the informed consent process, and I have written on the need to better understand the ethical obligations of physicians in working with families with an emphasis on better articulating the boundaries of the physician-family relationship. I am the author of the concept termed the "family covenant" (1991), a health care agreement between a health provider and entire family that sets out to address proactively issues revolving around individual and family claims to medical information. I am the co-developer and author of the Values History (1988) with Laurence McCullough, PhD, as a method for eliciting the values and advance directives of patients toward life-prolonging care. The Values History has been widely cited as a valuable model for facilitating discussion of relevant patient values important in end-of-life care decision-making. I co-authored the book, Planning for Uncertainty (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993; 2nd Edition) with William Reichel, MD, which examines the evaluation of patient values and their relevance to advance directive selection.