Robert S. Olick

For more than three decades I have taught and written extensively on a wide range of issues in medical ethics, health law, health policy and medical humanities. Teaching and scholarship has emphasized the interdisciplinary nature of the issues, with particular attention to the relationship between ethics and law. A substantial focus of my scholarship is on ethical, legal and policy issues around decisions near the end of life.

Primary faculty appointments have been at the University of Iowa College of Medicine (1996-2001) and SUNY Upstate Medical University (2001-2018). At Upstate I provided hundreds of hospital-based ethics consultations for patients, families and health care professionals.

Early in my career I was privileged to serve as staff to the New Jersey Bioethics Commission. There I led projects to develop and draft the Commission's proposed legislation on advance directives for health care and the declaration of death, both of which were enacted into law in 1991.

I currently teach in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at American University.