Neal W. Dickert, MD, PhD

Neal Dickert is Associate Professor of Medicine with Tenure at the Emory University School of Medicine, Division of Cardiology.  He is a core faculty member of the Emory Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute, holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, and is a senior faculty fellow at the Emory Center for Ethics. Dr. Dickert is a board-certified cardiologist and PhD-trained bioethicist, and he joined the Emory faculty in 2012. He is a Senior Physician, attending in the Emory University Hospital Cardiac Care Unit and echocardiography lab, and he is the Associate Program Director for the Clinician-Scientist Research Track of the Internal Medicine Residency Program. Dr. Dickert also directs the Recruitment Center of the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance.  

Dr. Dickert’s research is focused on ethical issues relevant to clinical practice and clinical research, especially in the context of cardiovascular disease.  Current projects are focused on ethical dimensions of shared decision-making, particularly integration of cost considerations in clinical encounters, and ethical aspects of clinical research in acute care settings. He is an alumnus of the Greenwall Faculty Scholars in Bioethics Program, a prior Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics at the National Academy of Medicine, a recipient of the Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research Pillars of PRIM&R award, and a faculty member of the American College of Cardiology.  He has received research funding from multiple NIH institutes, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the Greenwall Foundation.

For more information, visit: http://medicine.emory.edu/cardiology/emory-first-faculty-directory/profile.html?f=NJR

Consent-related challenges in acute cardiology research

In acute conditions, such as cardiopulmonary arrest and severe heart attack, research is needed to identify more effective therapies. However, patients are too sick to give informed consent for research, and surrogates are often not available before urgent study interventions would need to be instituted. Dr. Dickert’s project will develop, implement, and evaluate a strategy for patient or surrogate involvement in such research and also examine the requirement of community consultation if consent is waived in such research. He has published several articles on this topic.