Man of many missions

Daniel P. Sulmasy, MD, PhD, is a physician and an ethicist, a writer, teacher and New Yorker. He's also a Franciscan friar.

By Vida Foubister, AMNews staff. March 26, 2001.

It's not yet 8:30 a.m., and Daniel P. Sulmasy, MD, PhD, needs to make his first transition. "You can wait here. I'm going to go into the nearest phone booth," he says as he rushes off down the hall of the St. Francis of Assisi Friary in Manhattan.

Within minutes he's back. The long, dark brown habit worn by Franciscan friars has been replaced by the casual and conservative garb of an academic -- patterned tie, yellow shirt, plaid sport coat and brown pants.

Keeping up with Dr. Sulmasy on the 20-block walk down Seventh Avenue from the friary to Saint Vincents Hospital and Medical Center, where he chairs the John J. Conley Dept. of Ethics, leaves one breathless.

Like a true New Yorker, he stares down cabbies who might dare run him over and judges if he has time to cross the street by how many potholes will slow oncoming traffic's arrival at the intersection.

Dr. Sulmasy keeps up the pace as he goes about his day as a physician, an ethicist and a friar. He traverses between multiple professions with ease, from the church to the academic office to the bedside to the medical college to the clinic.

Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, who was a fellow with Dr. Sulmasy at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, struggled to find an analogy to describe his handling of these multiple roles.

"Juggling's not quite there because he really hangs on," said Dr. Sugarman, director of the Center for the Study of Medical Ethics and Humanities at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. "He remains committed to medicine, medical ethics and his faith." [...]