Dr. Daniel B. Hinshaw has been appointed Visiting Professor of Palliative Care at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Dr. Hinshaw is Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School, in the Section of General Surgery. He serves as an attending consultant physician on the inpatient palliative care consultation service at the VA Ann Arbor Health Care System and provides outpatient palliative care services at the University of Michigan Geriatrics Center. He completed a fellowship in Palliative Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in June 2001, during a sabbatical. His clinical research interests are focused on care at the end of life, spiritual distress in advanced illnesses, and the use of complementary medicine in the relief of pain.
“Our seminary faculty is very impressed by all of Dr. Hinshaw’s work, nationally and internationally,” said seminary Dean, Archpriest John Behr, who made the faculty appointment. “And, we are deeply honored by the fact that he now can represent St. Vladimir’s Seminary in these endeavors.”
Dr. Hinshaw currently is in Brasov, Romania helping with two courses in their Masters in Palliative Care program. He will be in Belgrade from March 4–16, and will meet with Dragan Makojevic, director of Serbian Orthodox Philanthropy and a SVOTS alumnus, who will help Dr. Hinshaw facilitate some meetings to explore possibilities of sharing his work with Serbian Orthodox Christians.
Speaking about his new association with SVOTS, Dr. Hinshaw said, “I am deeply honored by this appointment. It provides a wonderful opportunity to align my clinical, teaching, and scholarly work more closely with the healing mission of the Orthodox Church.
“A major challenge that modern health care poses to patients, especially those with a strong religious faith, is the compartmentalization of different perspectives and skills,” he continued. “This lack of effective interdisciplinary communication among those caring for the sick fragments most efforts at providing holistic care and exacerbates the suffering of those facing serious life-threatening illnesses. This is particularly problematic with regard to the integration of religious faith with the clinical care of the sick.
“The highly secularized nature of Western society has effectively divorced health care from the healing ministry of the Church,” he concluded. “I hope that the appointment to the SVOTS faculty will make it possible to create bridges between the profound Orthodox theological understanding of the human person in illness and health and the practical application of this understanding within pastoral and diaconal ministries of the Church that will transcend the many artificial boundaries created by secularization.”
Dr. Hinshaw and his wife, Dr. Jane (Carnahan) Hinshaw, have committed their lives to studying and offering palliative and hospice care not only in the U.S. but also in Romania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. In October 2011, the Hinshaws were on our seminary campus to present a seminar to our students: "Spiritual Issues in Suffering and Palliative Care." Because of the Hinshaws' medical expertise and the broad interest in their topic, their seminar was offered free to the public, and more than 50 students and guests, mostly neighboring hospital chaplains, attended. The entire seminary community welcomes Dr. Hinshaw back to St. Vladimir’s, in his new capacity. Truly we are blessed by this addition to our faculty.
