As a teacher, my goal is to develop health care providers who are comfortable with complexity, uncertainty and humility. I want students to learn skills that they can take with them beyond the classroom and connect to other aspects of their lives. In my experience as a student, I found that the content of any particular course is somewhat fleeting; it is in the cumulative experience of the educational process that one develops a capacity for intellectual playfulness and a willingness to explore new ideas. The goal of education should be to find the joy in refining one’s understanding and articulation of an idea, to locate that idea within a moral perspective, and then to share that newfound knowledge with others.

In addition to teaching at UW Bothell, I also have an adjunct position in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities in the UW School of Medicine. I also teach the Certificate in Guardianship program offered by UW Professional and Continuing Education that is required for all professional court-appointed guardians in the State of Washington.

My scholarly interests are in health care ethics and policy. In particular, my work addresses concepts of autonomy and dependency in contemporary society. Using a relational and feminist lens, I explore the tensions of affording patients the greatest breadth of autonomy, while also affirming and normalizing the varying states of dependency in which we all find ourselves. Some of the most vexing questions in health care practice and policy are related to decisions about when to decide for or with others—and when to allow them to decide for themselves.

My scholarship is informed by my work as a clinical ethicists at the UW Medical Center where I am the Chief of the Clinical Ethics Consult Service at UWMC–Northwest and a clinical ethics consultant at the Montlake campus.