Valerie B. Satkoske, MSW, PhD

Vice President of Mission Effectiveness and Spiritual Care for UPMC Mercy Hospital, 

Director of the Center’s Consortium Ethics Program

Valerie Satkoske, MSW, PhD is Vice President of Mission Effectiveness and Spiritual Care for UPMC Mercy Hospital, as well as the Director of the Center’s Consortium Ethics Program, which provides continuing ethics education to healthcare institutions and individuals throughout the Western Pennsylvania region. Dr. Satkoske returns to the University of Pittsburgh, where she previously served as the ethicist for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Prior to her return, she served as Director of Ethics at Wheeling Hospital in Wheeling, West Virginia, and Assistant Professor of Medical Education at West Virginia University, where she helped to direct the Center for Health Ethics & Law and designed a medical ethics curriculum for WVU medical students. She continues to serve as an ethics consultant for the West Virginia Rural Emergency Trauma Institute. Dr. Satkoske’s research interests include medical decision-making involving patients with cognitive difference, ethical issues in rural trauma care and in substance use disorder treatment, ethical management of delirium, and end-of-life decision making.