The 2012 Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician Awards in the early-career physician category honor Jason Morrow, MD, PhD, medical director of inpatient palliative care at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, for his advocacy in expanding palliative care services and his passion for educating medical students, residents, and other physicians in clinical practices and ethics.

Dr. Morrow’s advocacy and educational activities in palliative care have made him a role model. Clinicians have routinely sought his counsel in ethically complicated cases at University of Texas Health Science Center, as well as at Duke University Health System and Durham Regional Hospital, where he was a palliative care physician until July 2011.

He has received high praise for his skills as an educator. A point that he often emphasizes when teaching is that the best way to communicate with patients and their families is to listen, and not talk. “One of his greatest strengths is his ability to recruit those around him to advance the level of care provided to dying patients,” wrote Dr. David Gallagher, director of Duke University’s hospital medicine programs, in his nomination letter. “He is early in a career that is full of promise.”

Dr. Morrow received his medical degree and his doctorate in medical humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 2004.