Haavi Morreim, JD, PhD, is an academician, attorney and active mediator. Identified by the Tennessee Supreme Court as a mediator for litigated and nonlitigated disputes in both civil and family matters, she has extensive experience mediating cases ranging across employment, contract, landlord-tenant, real estate, debtor-creditor and beyond. In that setting Dr. Morreim particularly focuses on family-vs-family civil suits. These cases' emotional intensity is comparable to health care conflicts, and the need to find clarity out of highly complex factual situations is likewise similar to health care's multi-faceted conflicts.
Dr. Morreim brings a distinctive perspective to Conflict Resolution in Healthcare. Although she is a medical school professor (University of Tennessee) focusing on health law and bioethics, she is not ensconced in an office and her work is not the traditional courses-in-classrooms. Rather, Dr. Morreim is embedded in the clinical setting, based in the regular rounds and conferences during which faculty and physicians-in-training discuss patients, make medical decisions, and explore broader issues. This has permitted an ongoing, first-hand view of the day-to-day challenges, and the conflicts and nuances that arise for patients, families, physicians, nurses, and others in the health care setting. Conflicts are pervasive throughout healthcare delivery systems that now require intense interdependence among professionals previously accustomed to great independence. From that front-row vantage-point, Dr. Morreim sees adverse outcomes and in-house clashes long before they become deeply entrenched ethics disputes or potential lawsuits.
With that background Dr. Morreim frequently teaches conflict resolution skills to healthcare providers. Along with 3-day intensive courses taught to professionals from all across the United States, as professor in UT's College of Medicine she teaches day-long "Communications Bootcamp" courses to residents and a two-week elective course for upper-level medical students.
Dr. Morreim is active in the legal community:
Chair, Healthcare Committee; American Bar Association (ABA), Dispute Resolution Section
Chair, Task Force on ADR and Conflict Management; ABA, Health Law Section
Vice-Chair, Affinity Group on Dispute Resolution; American Health Lawyers Ass'n (2012-15).
Additionally Dr. Morreim has completed AHLA's training for Peer Review Hearing Officers. Finally, she has also provided legal services in long-term care litigation.
As an academician Dr. Morreim has authored two books and over one hundred sixty articles in journals of law, medicine, and bioethics, including California Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Journal of the American Medical Association, Archives of Internal Medicine, Hastings Center Report, and the Wall Street Journal. She has presented hundreds of invited lectures nationally and internationally, to such groups as the American Bar Association, the American Health Lawyers Association, the American Medical Association, the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and the Tennessee Bar Association.