Walt Davis, M.D.
Director of Education,
Center for Biomedical Ethics
434.924.5492
wsd3e@virginia.edu
Walt Davis joined the Center in April of 2000 as a physician-ethicist, and currently serves as a core faculty member and Director of Education. He is involved in curriculum development in the School of Medicine, particularly with regards to bioethics content, and is a small-group mentor for the first-year medical school course, "The Practice of Medicine." He also teaches a graduate seminar in clinical ethics, usually offered in the spring, and assists with a variety of educational activities for undergraduates, medical students, graduate students, medical residents, and attending level physicians, both here at UVA and nationwide.
Dr. Davis's clinical appointment is in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, where he staffs a weekly clinic in Prosthetics and Orthotics. His previous clinical experience includes inpatient neurorehabilitation (primarily stroke and traumatic brain injury), disability evaluation, and medical direction for a comprehensive musculoskeletal rehabilitation program for complex work-related injuries. Dr. Davis also serves on the Ethics Consult Service for the hospital.
Dr. Davis also currently serves as the "Research Subject Advocate" for the General Clinical Research Center at UVA. This position was created by the National Institutes of Health as part of an ongoing effort to improve protection for human subjects in medical research, and in this capacity Dr. Davis is working specifically on the issue of consent and involvement of persons with cognitive and communication impairments in biomedical research.
In addition to research ethics issues, Dr. Davis's research interests include ethical issues in the evaluation and treatment of impairment and disability, ethics in rehabilitation in general, and clinical and organizational ethics problems in health care for persons with chronic illness.