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Dr. Arthur Derse is director of medical and legal affairs and associate director of the Medical College of Wisconsin's Center for the Study of Bioethics. He also directs the Medical Humanities Program, and is professor of bioethics and emergency medicine.

His educational activities include direction of the medical school's medical ethics, medical humanities, and Healer's Art courses, as well as several graduate school courses encompassing law, ethics education and ethics consultation.

Dr. Derse is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). He is chair of the National Ethics Committee of the Veterans Health Administration, chair of the Ethics Committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and senior consultant for academic affairs at the American Medical Association's Institute for Ethics. He serves on the American Bar Association's Commission on Law and Aging. He contributed to the development of the Education on Palliative and End of Life Care (EPEC) Project, as well as the EPEC curriculum designed for emergency physicians (EPEC-EM) and serves as a member of their advisory boards and national faculty.

Dr. Derse serves as ethics committee chair at Froedtert Hospital and ethics consultant for the Milwaukee VA Hospital and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. His publication and research has focused on emergency medicine and ethics, confidentiality, informed consent, end-of-life decision making, the doctor-patient relationship and the use of the internet in academic bioethics and medicine. He is co-author of the Code of Ethics of the American College of Emergency Physicians and Practical Ethics for Students, Interns and Residents: A Short Reference Manual (3rd Edition).

Dr. Derse serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Bioethics, the Journal of Clinical Ethics, the Medical Ethics Advisor and the Virtual Mentor. He is the founder and moderator of the MCW Bioethics Discussion Forum, a nationally recognized academic Internet discussion group. He is a recipient of the Gold Foundation's Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award and was elected to the Medical College of Wisconsin's Society of Teaching Scholars. He received the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities 2008 Distinguished Service Award.

Dr. Derse is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, graduated cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School, and completed a fellowship in medical education at the Medical College of Wisconsin.