Her research interests focus on clinical ethics and include end of life care; ethics in health care chaplaincy; ethics in cancer care; conscientious objection and moral distress in health care; patient safety and the resolution of medical harm; and ethics education for pandemic planners.  Broader interests include narrative ethics and medical humanities.

Currently, she directs a research project that is revising the influential Hastings Center guidelines on end of life care.  This project is funded by the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation and the Albert Sussman Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust.  She recently completed a research project, funded by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, which examined how professional chaplains define “quality” within their own practice and profession, and how these definitions correspond to how chaplaincy is represented in the health care “QI” movement and in efforts to advance patient-centered care.

As Deputy Director, she manages the Center’s organizational capacity-building initiative, Bioethics and the Public Interest, which has received major support from the Ford Foundation.

Berlinger is the author of After Harm: Medical Error and the Ethics of Forgiveness (Johns Hopkins, 2005, paperback 2007) and is currently developing a project on cancer “survivorship” and the future of cancer care.

She serves on the ethics research group of the Joint Commission; the ethics faculty of the American Society of Healthcare Risk Managers (ASHRM); the bioethics committees at Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York and at Richmond of New York, a longterm care facility; and the editorial board of Medical Ethics Advisor.  She teaches health care ethics at the Yale School of Nursing, and is a frequent presenter at grand rounds and other ethics education programs for health care professionals.   She volunteers on the Chaplaincy Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. 

She is a graduate of Smith College and holds the Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Glasgow and the M.Div. in Christian Ethics from Union Theological Seminary.

Selected Publications

Nancy Berlinger, After Harm: Medical Error and the Ethics of Forgiveness (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, pb 2007)

Nancy Berlinger, “The Dog in the Manger: HHS’s Continuing Conscience Crisis," Bioethics Forum(August 26, 2008):

Nancy Berlinger,    “A Novel Remedy for Vaccination Refusal,” Bioethics Forum(August 12, 2008)

Nancy Berlinger and Jacob Moses, “The Five People You Meet in a Pandemic – and What They Need From You Today,” Hastings Center Bioethics Backgrounder, November 2007; available from "Promising Practices: Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Tools,” a peer-reviewed database maintained by CIDRAP and the Pew Center on the States

Nancy Berlinger, “Taking ‘Existential’ Suffering Seriously,” Ethics Rounds, Journal of Pain andSymptom Management 34 no. 1 (2007): 109-10.

Nancy Berlinger, “Parental Resistance to Childhood Immunizations: Clinical, Ethical and Policy Considerations,” American Medical Association Virtual Mentor. October 2006. 8:681-684

Nancy Berlinger, “Avoiding Cheap Grace: Medical Harm, Patient Safety, and the Culture(s) of Forgiveness,” Hastings Center Report 33, no. 6 (2003): 28-36