David John Doukas


David John Doukas, is an American family physician and bioethicist. He holds the James A. Knight Chair of Humanities and Ethics in Medicine, and directs the Program in Medical Ethics and Human Values at Tulane University's School of Medicine. Prof. Doukas also is the Executive Director of the Master of Science in Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Tulane University. Professor Doukas was Founding President of the Academy for Professionalism in Health Care from 2012 to 2019.

Biography

Doukas holds degrees in Biology and Religious Studies from the University of Virginia and an M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine. After completing a Family Practice internship at UCLA and residency st the University of Kentucky, he completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Bioethics at the Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute of Ethics of Georgetown University. He previously has served on the faculties of Georgetown University, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and as the William Ray Moore Endowed Chair of Family Medicine and Medical Humanism, the Director of the Division of Medical Humanism and Ethics, a Professor in the Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine, and co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Master of Arts in Bioethics Program at the University of Louisville. He joined the faculty of the Tulane University's School of Medicine in December of 2017.

Professional work

His scholarship focuses on the areas of professionalism, primary care bioethics, genetics, and end-of-life care decision-making. He is the originator of the concept termed the family covenant, a health care agreement between a health provider and entire family that sets out to address proactively issues revolving around individual and family claims to medical information. Doukas and others subsequently applied the family covenant to genetic and end-of-life ethical circumstances. He is the co-developer and author of the Values History with LB McCullough as a method for eliciting the values and advance directives of patients toward life-prolonging care, that has been widely cited as a valuable means to enhance the process of identifying relevant patient values important in end-of-life care decision-making. He co-authored the book, Planning for Uncertainty with William Reichel, M.D., which examines the evaluation of patient values and their relevance to advance directive selection. According to WorldCat, the book's two editions are held in 1031 libraries.