Kristi L Kirschner, MD

Kristi L. Kirschner, MD is a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Medical Education, Neurology & Rehabilitation, and Medicine (Academic Internal Medicine), and Director of Undergraduate Education in the Department of Medical Education. She is an Adjunct Professor, Department of Disability and Human Development within the College of Applied Health Sciences.

Dr. Kirschner’s academic interests include health humanities and bioethics with a particular focus on disability issues and marginalized populations; the training of health care professionals about health humanities, bioethics and disability; and health care access for people with disabilities including reproductive health services. She also is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Disabilities and Human Development at UIC where she worked with Carol Gill PhD and Teresa Savage PhD RN, to create the Certificate in Disability Ethics in 2003.

As background, she is a physician specializing in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with particular interest in the needs of patients with complex neurological disabilities, including adults with spina bifida, neuromuscular diseases and cerebral palsy.  She is a 1986 graduate of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, and a fellow of the University of Chicago MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics (1994-1995). She completed her residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in 1990 at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and was an attending physician there until December of 2009.  Concurrently, she was also on the faculty of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Medical Humanities and Bioethics, and PM&R.  She was the founding director for the Donnelley Family Disability Ethics Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, serving in this role from 1995-2009. She was the inaugural special feature editor for the Ethics/ Law column in PM&R: Journal of Injury, Function and Rehabilitation from 2009-2015 the office scientific journal of the American Academy of PM&R www.pmrjournal.org/content/edboard. She was also one of the founders of the RIC Women with Disabilities Center and served as the medical director from 1991-2009.

From 2010-2019, she practiced at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital on the westside of Chicago, a safety net rehabilitation hospital. Given her interests in health care access and social justice she helped to create the Community Care Alliance of Illinois (CCAI) in 2012, a not-for- profit Chicago-land managed care plan serving seniors and adults with disabilities in Medicaid and Medicare Advantage. Though CCAI was not able to survive the Illinois Medicaid rebidding process in 2017, she remains committed to working on solutions for better quality care for patients with complex conditions in publicly funded insurance systems. She has served in the past on the board of Access Living of Chicago, the local independent living center, and as a trustee of Devices4theDisabled, a not-for-profit medical equipment recycling program. In 2019, she left her clinical practice at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital to work on complex care and structural solutions in health reform. She is currently working with a team at UIHealth to build an interdisciplinary Lifespan Disability Clinic based in Academic Internal Medicine. Her current academic work is focused on disability ethics and the development and evaluation of health professional curriculum around disability, as well as to develop disability curriculum for health professional students and an interprofessional effort.

University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine (1986)
Internship in Internal Medicine, Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago(1986-87)
Residency in PM&R McGaw Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (1987-1990)
Fellowship in Clinical Medical Ethics at MacLean Center, University of Chicago (1994-95)