About the Center

Director

Liz Stokes is the Director of the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights and demonstrates expertise in writing public policy on ethical issues including medical marijuana, assisted death, intellectual disabilities, and women's reproductive health.

She completed her Bachelors of Science in Nursing at the University of Virginia and worked several years as a critical care nurse focusing on end-of-life care issues. Liz received her Juris Doctor from the University of Richmond and worked as a Discipline Consultant for the District of Columbia Board of Nursing interpreting and conferring professional ethical provisions in nursing. Her expertise and leadership is also demonstrated through various charitable roles in the health and legal communities.

She is a member of the Phi Delta Phi Legal Fraternity and currently serves on the board of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities Nurse Affinity Group. Her areas of expertise include bioethics, nursing ethics and substance use disorder in nursing. She is an international speaker on the Code of Ethics for Nurses is published in the Journal of Nursing Regulation and the Journal for Nurse Practitioners. Liz also serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry.

She is an active volunteer with the District of Columbia Bar Association and has received national recognition for her pro bono efforts. Liz's sphere of influence as a nurse-attorney combined with her education in bioethics enables a unique contribution to nursing ethics, law and policy.

Senior Policy & Ethics Advisor

Kara Curry, MA, RN, HEC-C is a Senior Policy and Ethics Advisor at the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights.  She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish at High Point University. She also graduated from Duke University after completing the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program.  Her clinical practice experience includes surgical oncology, forensic nursing, perioperative nursing, and travel medicine.  After spending years at the bedside, her participation as an inaugural member of a hospital-wide nurse ethics committee led to her interests in healthcare ethics.  This interest led her to pursue graduate studies in bioethics and completing her Master of Arts in Bioethics from Loyola University Chicago.  She has served as a pediatric clinical ethicist in Washington, DC developing a true passion for the ethical complexities and challenges experienced in the field of pediatrics. She is published in the American Journal of Bioethics and the American Academy of Pediatrics Journal, Hospital Pediatrics. Her ethical interests are in ethics education within the nursing profession, pediatric ethics, as well as exploring intersectionality and the role it plays in the health outcomes of black women.

Term of Appointment 2023-2026

Nelda Godfrey, PhD, ACNS-BC, FAAN, is currently Professor and Associate Dean for Innovative Partnerships and Practice at the University of Kansas School of Nursing.  She has a long history of involvement with ethics, including serving for more than 10 years as a public member of two health system ethics committees. She has taught ethics courses in nursing and in liberal studies, and helped create a liberal arts capstone course entitled “Birth by any Means:  The Ethics of Reproductive Technologies.” 

Dr. Godfrey and colleague Nancy Crigger co-authored the book, “The Making of Nurse Professionals: A Transformational, Ethical Perspective” as a response to the Carnegie Foundation study on Preparing the Professions. Since that time, Dr. Godfrey and her colleagues have been developing a nursing perspective of professional identity formation and expanding the view within nursing to include formation as an important education, practice and policy consideration.

A recent contributor to American Nurse Today, Dr. Godfrey has written widely on ethics, nursing leadership, professional identity and innovative organizational approaches to nursing education.  Her BSN and PhD are from the University of Missouri and her MSN is from the University of Kansas.  She is a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Adult Care.

Term of Appointment 2021-2024

Dr. Jennifer L. Bartlett, an Associate Professor of Nursing at Georgia Baptist College of Nursing of Mercer University, earned her PhD in Nursing (focus in Nursing Education)  from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Bartlett has a background in intensive care nursing and has been a nurse educator since 1999. She currently teaches medical-surgical nursing at the undergraduate level, as well as ethics at the graduate level. Dr. Bartlett is third author on the Fundamentals of Nursing: The Art and Science of Person-Centered Care textbook (9^th and 10^th editions). Dr. Bartlett is a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator (CHSE) with extensive experience in the development, implementation, and evaluation of simulation across the nursing continuum.  Her expertise in nursing education, curriculum development, and assessment and evaluation informs her work in nursing education.

Dr. Bartlett completed a formal two-year ethics consultation training program at Bon Secours Virginia. She has presented locally, nationally, and internationally on nursing ethics and participated in the annual National Nursing Ethics Conference (NNEC) as a planning committee member for almost ten years.  She served as a member of the EAB Ethics Education subcommittee 2016-2018, and has chaired that subcommittee since 2019.. 

Term of Appointment 2023 - 2026

Dr. Wocial has been a registered nurse since 1985. Her clinical background is neonatal intensive care, including 10 years as a neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist. She has conducted research focused on family decision making in the NICU around withdrawing or withholding treatment. Her current research focuses on moral distress of professional caregivers, with a particular interest on clinicians who practice in the in-patient setting. She is currently the senior clinical ethicist at Medstar Washington Hospital Center (MWHC) in Washington DC. She is the former nurse ethicist and program leader in Nursing Ethics for the Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics (FCME) at Indiana University Health) in Indianapolis, Indiana and remains a senior affiliate faculty member with FCME. She chairs the ethics consultation service sub-committee and is an active member of the ethics consultation service at MWHC.

Dr. Wocial is a certified Healthcare Ethics Consultant and serves on the Commission for Healthcare Clinical Ethics Consultation Certification. She was the project director for the Woltman Inter-professional Communication Project with the Indiana University School of Nursing where she was an adjunct assistant professor and taught applied ethics to undergraduate nursing students. She will be joining the Georgetown University School of Nursing as an adjunct faculty member in 2023, teaching ethics to graduate students. She is a senior associate faculty for Vital Talk. She led the “IMPACT” program at Indiana University Health. IMPACT is a communication skills training program specifically designed to help direct care nurses develop skills in conversations around palliative and end-of-life care.

Dr. Wocial has expertise in ethics and in difficult communication that takes place in the ICU setting, particularly around surrogate decision making. She has been a part of the ethics advisory board’s ethics education subcommittee since 2019. All of her nursing degrees (BS, MS, PhD) are from the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon.