Michael Green, MS, MD

Dr. Michael Green joined the faculty of Penn State College of Medicine in 1996. His research has focused on decision-making, bioethics and communication, and has received funding through the NIH, the American Cancer Society and several foundations.

Most recently, Dr. Green’s research has focused on helping patients and their family members make informed decisions at the end-of-life. Together with long-time collaborator Dr. Benjamin Levi, Dr. Green is the co-creator of “Making Your Wishes Known,” an interactive computer-based decision aid that helps individuals be better prepared to make medical decisions when they can no longer speak for themselves. In diverse populations and settings, this decision aid has been shown to reliably and accurately represent patients’ wishes for life-sustaining care, to help physicians more accurately predict what patients would want, and to increase concordance between what spokespersons would choose on behalf of patients and what patients say they would actually want.

Dr. Green also is a pioneer in the use of comics in medical education. He helped establish the field of “Graphic Medicine” and has published landmark articles on the topic as well as being one of the authors of the Graphic Medicine Manifesto from Penn State University Press. He is guest editor of the Graphic Medicine section of the Annals of Internal Medicine, and he teaches a course on Comics and Medicine to 4th-year medical students, whose comics can be viewed online.

In the area of professionalism and medical training, Dr. Green has authored several important articles on truth-telling, professional identify formation, informed consent and communication, and is co-author of the book Breaking the Cycle: How to Turn Conflict into Collaboration When You and Your Patients Disagree from ACP Press.

In addition to his research interests, Dr. Michael Green is a physician and bioethicist. He is Chair of the Hershey Medical Center’s Ethics Committee, Director of the Program in Bioethics and cares for patients in the primary care setting.