Connie M. Ulrich, PhD, RN is the Lillian S. Brunner Chair in Medical and Surgical Nursing and a Professor of Bioethics and Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing with a secondary appointment in the Perelman School of Medicine, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.
Dr. Ulrich trained in bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in the Department of Bioethics. Her national and international bioethics program of research has focused on advancing empirical bioethics in both clinical practice and research using innovative mixed methodology approaches. This includes research and writings on the ethical issues that providers (nurses and social workers and advanced practitioners) encounter in their clinical day-to-day practice and the ethical stress these issues engender. She has written on these issues in news outlets, including the Boston Globe, the Hill, Washington Post, and others. She has also received NIH funding to examine ethical issues in research examining the factors important to patients with cancer who participate in cancer clinical trials and their retention in these trials. She has also received funding from other NIH, federal and state agencies.
Dr. Ulrich has published in leading medical, nursing, and bioethics peer-review journals; and has published a book on “Everyday Ethics: Ethical Issues and Stress in Nursing Practice.” Her most recent book published by Springer Nature with her colleague Dr. Christine Grady is entitled Moral Distress in the Health Professions. Her current book with Springer Nature will explore the many ethical issues that nurses faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Ulrich also worked with several of her bioethics colleagues to publish the first Hastings Center Special Report on “Nurses at the Table: Nursing, Ethics, and Health Policy.” Dr. Ulrich has also served as a bioethicist on several DSMBs appointed by the National Institutes of Health and is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and past Co-Chair of the Bioethics Expert Panel, a 2018 inductee into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honor Society and a Salzburg Global Fellow.