Bio
Jeffrey Spike, PhD, is the Ethics Scholar-in-Residence at Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C. and a Clinical Professor at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in the Departments of Pediatrics and Clinical Research and Leadership.
His graduate work in philosophy was done at the University of Chicago (where he worked with Donald Davidson, Paul Ricoeur, and Stephen Toulmin) and the Johns Hopkins University (where he worked with Jaegwon Kim). Originally a metaphysician by training, he has been interested in the nature of the mind, thought, and decision-making capacity. As a bioethicist he has worked and published in clinical ethics, research ethics, organizational ethics, environmental ethics, public health ethics, and interprofessional ethics.
Dr. Spike has worked on medical curriculum development (UGME and GME) and published a number of articles on film and bioethics. He has published articles in MedEdPortal and elsewhere on “Wit,” “Lorenzo’s Oil,” “The Doctor,” and “Dax’s Case” as well as on teaching how to take a history by making short video documentaries about patients, and on teaching a humanities sequence on narrative medicine in the clinical clerkships.
Dr. Spike founded the ethics case study series in the American Journal of Bioethics and is currently on the Editorial Board of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics.
Featured Works
Spike, JP. “Two Ethical Foundations for Pediatrics: The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child and Bioethical Principles.” Chapter 5 in Pediatric Ethics: Theory and Practice. Nico Nortje and Johan Bester, editors (Springer, 2021).
Spike, JP. “Is there a right and left when the question is about right and wrong? The irreducible differences between ethics and politics, religion, and morals.” Ethics, Medicine, and Public Health, 14, July-Sept. 2020.
Spike, JP and Moise KJ. “A Model Ethics Board for Innovative Practice and Centers of Excellence.” The American Journal of Bioethics, October 2019, 19:10, W5-W8. (DOI:10.1080/15265161.2019.1643946)
Rozmus C and Spike JP. Theoretical Basis for Nursing, fifth edition, “Chapter 18: Ethical Theories and Principles.” Melanie McEwen and Evelyn M. Wills, editors. Wolters Klewer, 2019.
Spike JP. “Clinical Ethics and Clinical Ethics Consultation in the ICU,” Ch. 8 in Current Concepts in Adult Critical Care (SCCM, 2018).
Spike, JP, “Informed Consent as the Essence of Capacity Assessment,” J Law Med Ethics, 45 (2017): 95-105. DOI: 10.1177/1073110517703103 (Special issue on reconceptualizing informed consent by the American Bar Association Committee on Bioethics and the Law)
Spike JP. “Principles for public health ethics.” Ethics, Medicine and Public Health (2018), 4, pp. 13-20, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemep.2017.12.003
Spike JP and Lunstroth R. A Casebook in Interprofessional Ethics. Springer, 2016.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Adjunct Lecturer, College of Arts & Sciences