Daniel B. Hinshaw, M.D. is professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Michigan School of Medicine and consultant in palliative medicine at the University of Michigan Geriatrics Center. The founding director of the Palliative Care Consultation Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he formerly served as chief of surgery then as chief of the medical staff at the VAMC and assistant dean for Veterans Affairs. His clinical research interests are focused on care at the end of life, spiritual distress in advanced illness, and the use of massage in the relief of pain and suffering. His basic research interests were focused on mechanisms of cell injury and death. Dr. Hinshaw was educated at Loma Linda University (LLU) and earned his M.D. at the LLU School of Medicine in 1978. After a surgical residency at LLU Medical Center, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Immunology at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California. He joined the University of Michigan medical faculty in 1987. Dr. Hinshaw took a clinical fellowship in palliative medicine at the Cleveland Clinic during a sabbatical in 2001. He has provided volunteer services in hospice programs in Uganda and Ethiopia, as well as in Romania where he has been a visiting professor at Transilvania University in Brasov and worked with local faculty to create master’s level courses in palliative care. He has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Belgrade in the Republic of Serbia. Dr. Hinshaw currently serves as professor of palliative care at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS) and visiting professor at Balamand University in Lebanon. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Committee on Surgical Palliative Care of the American College of Surgeons.
In addition to more than eighty papers published in scientific journals and in volumes of collected works, he is the author of Suffering and the Nature of Healing, published in 2013, and Touch and the Healing of the World, published in 2017, both by St. Vladimir’s Seminary (SVS) Press. For the fall semester of 2018, he was a visiting professor and residential fellow at the Notre Dame University Institute for Advanced Studies, where he has been working on his third book, Thriving in the Face of Mortality: Kenosis and the Mystery of Life
Teaching Interests
He currently teaches a course entitled, "Ministry to the Sick and Dying," in the Pastoral Theology curriculum to masters and doctoral level students at SVOTS.
Current Projects and Research Interests
Dr. Hinshaw’s most recent scholarly book was initiated during a fellowship at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies during the Fall Semester of Academic Year 2018-2019, and is entitled, Thriving in the Face of Mortality: Kenosis and the Mystery of Life. It has been submitted for publication and is currently under review at the University of Notre Dame Press.
Recent Awards
Fellowship in the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, Fall Semester 2018