Monica L. Gerrek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and serves as the Co-Director of both the Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Institute of Burn Ethics at the MetroHealth System.
As the Co-Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics, Dr. Gerrek oversees MetroHealth’s clinical ethics consult service and ethics education programming, including Bioethics@Noon which she established in 2012. She also chairs MetroHealth’s Ethics Committee and Schwartz Center Rounds Planning Committee, and is a member of its Privacy Board.
Dr. Gerrek teaches "Bioethics: Dilemmas" and "Dutch Perspectives: Drugs, Decriminalization, and Detention", a spring break study abroad course in the Netherlands, with Marcie Lambrix, MA. She also supervises undergraduate and graduate independent studies.
Teaching Information
Courses Taught
Research Information
Research Interests
- Animal ethics
- Food ethics
- Environmental ethics
- Ethics of poverty
Research Projects
In her role as the Co-Director of the Institute of Burn Ethics, Dr. Gerrek oversees its research program, which since 2015 has produced more than a dozen presentations at regional, national, and international conferences. Her own work currently focuses on autonomy and capacity in decision making in burn care, paternalism in burn care, and monozygotic skin grafting. She is the first clinical ethicist to serve on the American Burn Association Ethical Issues Committee, a committee that she is vice-chair of at this time.
Dr. Gerrek’s second major research area is the ethics of correctional healthcare. This work is done in collaboration with members of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and MetroHealth’s medical providers at the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center. Her current interests are the clinical ethical issues that arise when caring for individuals confined to the jail and the ethics of medical providers advocating for these patients.
External Appointments
Co-Director, Center for Biomedical Ethics, MetroHealth System
Co-Director, Institute of Burn Ethics, Center for Biomedical Ethics, MetroHealth System
Publications
Gerrek ML. (2018). “Getting Past Dax.” AMA J Ethics, 20(6) 581-588.
Schirokauer O, Tallman TA, Jeunnette L, Mavrakis, D and Gerrek ML (2017). “Ethics Students Go To the Jail.” AMA J Ethics,19(9) 845-853.
Podcast:
AMA Journal of Ethics Podcast appearance (June 2018) with Andrea Rubin, burn survivor. "Ethics Talk: How to Help Burn Patients Survive and Thrive - An Interview with Dr. Monica Gerrek and Andrea Rubin."