Literature Helps Ethicist Explore What It Means to Be Human

The liberal arts prepared Virginia L. Green Bartlett to ask the right questions as a clinical ethics consultant. Photo by Shane K. Bartlett.

An excellent liberal arts education from University of Mary Washington positioned Virginia L. Green Bartlett ’01 to thrive as a clinical ethics consultant.

The assistant director at the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center learned “how to pay attention and how to pursue a question” at Mary Washington, she said. “I learned how to ask questions and how to learn with other people.”

Bartlett works with patients, families, and health care providers to identify and help resolve concerns, conflicts, and moral challenges that emerge in health care settings. Her consultations can take 10 minutes or six weeks.

At UMW, Bartlett double majored in English and religion. She continued her studies at Vanderbilt University, where she earned master’s degrees in theological studies and religion, and a doctorate in religion. Today, along with consulting, she teaches and does research in the 1,000-bed medical center in Los Angeles.

Bartlett recently gave a lecture at Arizona State University about her journey from undergraduate studies in medieval literature to the hospital intensive care unit – or anywhere else she is called to go as an ethics consultant. She told curious undergraduates in the bioethics and society program that the questions people face in a high-tech modern medical center are similar to questions that Dante wrote about 700 years ago and that sci-fi writers probe today.

What does it mean to be alive?

How does one find meaning in suffering?

How do humans experience being human, and how do we talk about it with other humans?

Such timeless questions are at the core of medieval literature, religion, and medicine, Bartlett said. “A major part of what I do each day is learning to ask those questions and helping other people ask them as well – and learning to live with whatever answers we find.”

Bartlett knew about Mary Washington because her grandmother, Elizabeth Louise “Betty Lou” Jones ’47, was an alumna. When Bartlett first visited campus, she immediately connected with the community, faculty, and intellectual environment.

Once she was a student, she “found a mentor in [Professor of English] Teresa Kennedy and a home in studying English,” she said. “I added religion because I recognized many connections between those two different disciplines. Mary Washington helped me learn how to see such relationships and be adaptable in my learning.

“Mary Washington allowed me to pursue the variety of interests that eventually led to this career path.”