Robert L. Klitzman, MD
Doctor, Will You Pray for Me? How Patients, Families and Doctors Seek Purpose and Hope in the World Today
Summary
In today’s world, patients and their families and doctors of various backgrounds face existential, spiritual, and religious quandaries and seek sources of meaning, purpose, hope, and connection, but how do they respond and what helps them? This talk, drawing on Robert Klitzman’s new book, Doctor, Will You Pray for Me?, explores these questions and illuminates the vital role chaplains play in hospitals for a generally under-informed public
Robert L. Klitzman, MD
Robert Klitzman, M.D., is a Professor of Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joseph Mailman School of Public Health, and the Director of the Online and In-person Bioethics Masters and Certificate Programs at Columbia University. He has written over 180 scientific journal articles, ten books, and numerous chapters on critical issues in bioethics regarding doctor-patient relationships and communication, research, genetics, mental health, pandemics and other areas. His books include Doctor, Will You Pray for Me?: Medicine, Chaplains and Healing the Whole Person, The Ethics Police?: The Struggle to Make Human Research Safe, When Doctors Become Patients, Am I My Genes? Confronting Fate and Family Secrets in the Age of Genetic Testing, Designing Babies: How Technology is Changing How We Have Children, A Year-Long Night: Tales of a Medical Internship, In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist, The Trembling Mountain: A Personal Account of Kuru, Cannibals and Mad Cow Disease, Being Positive: The Lives of Men and Women With HIV, and Mortal Secrets: Truth and Lies in the Age of AIDS,
Klitzman has received numerous awards for his work, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Aaron Diamond Foundation, the Hastings Center and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has been a gubernatorial appointee to the Empire State Stem Cell Commission, and the Ethics Working Group of the HIV Prevention Trials Network, and served on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Research Ethics Advisory Panel. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN and Psychology Today.