Associate Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Associate Member, Department of Philosophy
Member, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis

Lisa Schwartz is in her second five-year term as the Arnold L. Johnson Chair in Health Care Ethics. She is an associate professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and an associate member in the Department of Philosophy. She is also the Faculty of Health Sciences representative for the Faculty of Humanities. She received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Glasgow (1996), and both an MA (1990) and a BA (1985) in philosophy from McGill University. She is also a founding member of the Ontario Cancer Research Ethics Board (OCREB), and served as a consultant to Cancer Care Ontario (2001-2005), advising on issues of clinical ethics. Schwartz has been involved in the development of an ethics and moral reasoning stream of Professional Competencies for the undergraduate medical education program at McMaster University, has led workshops to build faculty and staff knowledge in health ethics and has created a website on ethics in health care. She is a standing member of the Clinical Ethics Committee for Hamilton Health Sciences, Chair of the Bioethics Interest Group (BIG) for the Faculty of Health Sciences, and member of the McMaster Research Ethics Board Appeals Committee. She has several research interests in health care ethics and ethics in health care education, research ethics, privacy and access to biosamples, patient advocacy, and measurement and effectiveness of ethics education.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• the teaching of ethics in health care education
• patient advocacy
• research ethics
• bioethics
• privacy and confidentiality 

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Thompson T, Barbour R, Schwartz L. Adherence to advance directives in critical care decision making: vignette study. BMJ. 2003 Nov 1;327(7422):1011.

Schwartz L. Parallel experience: how art and art theory can inform ethics in human research. Medical Humanities, Dec 2003; 29: 59 – 64. Editor’s Choice.

Goldie J, Schwartz L, Morrison J. The impact of a modern medical curriculum on students' proposed behaviour on meeting ethical dilemmas. Medical Education 2004 Sep; 38(9):942-9.

Goldie J, Schwartz L, Morrison J. Sex and the surgery: students' attitudes and potential behaviour as they pass through a modern medical curriculum. Journal of Medical Ethics. 2004 Oct; 30 (5):480-6.

Miller FA, Ahern C, Ogilvie J, Giacomini M, Schwartz L. Ruling in and ruling out: implications of molecular genetic diagnoses for disease classification. Soc Sci Med. 2005 Dec;61(12):2536-45. Epub 2005 Jun 14.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

• Health Ethics
• Bioethics
• Ethics in Human Research
• Health Law