Marie Nolan, former professor and the M. Adelaide Nutting Endowed Chair, is internationally known for her work on patient and family decision making in the face of critical illness. Her pioneering end-of-life research has revealed that instead of the autonomous decision making model prevalent in clinical practice and health care policy, most critically ill patients prefer shared decision making with their family and physician. Moreover, these preferences remain stable over time, even as health declines significantly. Dr. Nolan also served as executive vice dean, associate dean for academic affairs, chair of the Department of Acute and Chronic Care and director of the PhD Program. Dr. Nolan was the Johns Hopkins director of the China PhD Program Collaboration between Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) in Beijing and JHSON funded by the China Medical Board of New York. This collaboration led to PUMC producing the first graduates of a PhD program in nursing in China. Dr. Nolan served on advisory panels of the National Institutes of Health regarding end-of-life care research. Widely published in the nursing and multidisciplinary research literature, she received the Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association and was inducted into the Sigma International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame for her work.
