Marcia Day Childress, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Medical Education (Medical Humanities)
Associate Director, Center for Humanism in Medicine
Barringer 5361 • (434) 924 2094 • woolf@virginia.edu
Marcia Day Childress is associate director of the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Center for Humanism in Medicine. In this role, she oversees elective courses in humanities disciplines and other educational programming in medical humanities and administrative operations of the Center. She also directs the Medical Center Hour, the School of Medicine's weekly forum on medicine and society. From 1996-2005, she was co-director of the Program of Humanities in Medicine, which in spring 2005 was reorganized into the Center for Humanism in Medicine.
Professor Childress teaches medical school courses in Literature and Medicine, Death in America/Palliative Medicine, Cells to Society and Practice of Medicine I, and directs medical students' independent research in humanities and the arts. She also teaches, together with a law professor, an Interprofessional Seminar in Ethical Values & Professional Life for medical and law students.
Her research interests include narrative in medicine, reflective education and the moral formation of the physician, and uses of literature and the visual arts in medical education (including faculty development) and preparation for professional life. She writes on literature and the role of narrative and the arts in medicine, ethics, medical education, and end-of-life care.
A charter member of the medical school's Academy of Distinguished Educators, Professor Childress received a Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching and was elected to the national medical honor societies Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Active in institutional service, having been chair of the Faculty Senate, chair of two Senate standing committees and chair of the President's Advisory Committee on Women's Concerns, she also sits on the School of Medicine 's Committee on Women, the Faculty Development Advisory Committee, the Medical Education Advisory Committee and the Principles of Medicine Committee.
Professor Childress holds degrees in English literature (B.A., Michigan State University; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Virginia, where she wrote her dissertation on Virginia Woolf).