David M Steinhorn, MD, Biography

Dr. Steinhorn is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School with post-graduate training in Pediatric Hepatology and Critical Care. He was a Bioethics consultant under Arthur Caplan, PhD, at the University of Minnesota Hospitals and Clinics where he was an attending physician in Pediatric Critical Care. Following relocation to the Children’s Hospital of Buffalo, Dr. Steinhorn undertook post-doctoral clinical training in Hospice and Palliative Care under Dr. Robert Milch. At that time, Dr. Steinhorn became the first medical director and assisted in creating the Essential Care Program in Buffalo. He is currently a Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and serves as Medical Director of the Bridges Palliative Care Program at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Dr. Steinhorn was the Medical Director for the Children’s Memorial Hospital Integrative Medicine Initiative for seven years which undertook research on complementary medicine in children. He has training in energy medicine, Fourth Way traditions, yoga meditation, and shamanism. Dr. Steinhorn continues to serve full-time as an attending physician primarily in cardiac critical care. He is on the medical advisory board of Almost Home Kids, a transitional care facility in suburban Naperville, and is the advisor to the Northern Illinois Pediatric Palliative Care Coalition. He is certified by the American Academy of Pediatrics in Critical Care and Hospice and Palliative Medicine as well as by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Care. Dr. Steinhorn serves on the Executive Committee and was a founding member of the AAP’s Section on Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Above all else, Dr. Steinhorn’s professional and personal passion is to bring light and awareness of spirit into institutional pediatric healthcare and into his own life.