ReachMD

Dr. Paul Helft has been director of the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics at Indiana University Health since 2004. A native of Indianapolis, he completed his undergraduate degree in humanities, medical degree, internship and residency in internal medicine, and fellowships in hematology/oncology and clinical medical ethics at the University of Chicago. There, he was a fellow, senior fellow and Doctor-Patient Relationship Scholar at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Dr. Helft joined the faculty of the Indiana University School of Medicine in 2001, where he is currently an associate professor of medicine. His clinical work is based in the gastrointestinal oncology program at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. At Indiana University Health, he is a member of the Ethics Committee and co-chairs the Ethics Consultation Subcommittee.

Dr. Helft oversees all aspects of Fairbanks Center operations and is responsible for the creation of its major programs, including the Fairbanks Fellowship in Clinical Ethics and the Fairbanks Program in Nursing Ethics. Dr. Helft's own research interests have focused on the ethical aspects of doctor-patient communication. He is the author of more than 30 publications and dozens of abstracts. He has lectured widely on ethics and gastrointestinal malignancies, and has been the principal investigator on seven grants. In 2007, he was awarded the Victoria L. Champion Boundary Spanning Award from the Indiana University School of Nursing for his work in creating connections in ethics between doctors and nurses. He has taught ethics to scores of multidisciplinary professionals and created the core curriculum taught to ethics fellows at the Fairbanks Center.