Lucia Wocial, PhD, RN, FAAN, HEC-C

Dr. Wocial has been a registered nurse since 1985.  Her clinical background is neonatal intensive care, including 10 years as a neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist.  Her current research focuses on moral distress of professional caregivers, with a particular interest on clinicians who practice in the in-patient setting.   She is currently the senior clinical ethicist at the John J. Lynch Center for Ethics at Medstar Washington Hospital Center (MWHC) in Washington DC. She is the former nurse ethicist and program leader in Nursing Ethics for the Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics (FCME) at Indiana University Health) in Indianapolis, Indiana and remains a senior affiliate faculty member with FCME.   She chairs the ethics consultation service sub-committee and is an active member of the ethics consultation service at MWHC.  She is a certified Healthcare Ethics Consultant and serves on the Commission for Healthcare Clinical Ethics Consultation Certification.  She was the project director for the Woltman Inter-professional Communication Project with the Indiana University School of Nursing where she was an adjunct assistant professor.  She is a senior associate faculty for VitalTalk.  Dr. Wocial has expertise in ethics and in difficult communication that takes place in the ICU setting, particularly around surrogate decision making.  She is a co-PI on an NIH funded grant evaluating the impact of advance care planning conversations on community dwelling elder adults.