Sarah B. Vittone DBe, MSN, MA, RN is an Associate Professor at Georgetown University. She serves as the Senior Director for Undergraduate Studies and Masters Entry Programs at the School of Nursing. Dr. Vittone is the second Vice Chair of the Executive Faculty of the School of Nursing as of July 2022. She joined the the School of Nursing and Health Studies in 2004. She completed her Doctor of Bioethics (DBe) from Loyola University Chicago. Her research interests include advocates and decision making for others, refusal by surrogates and surrogate's experience with decisional paralysis. She earned a BSN and MSN (Pediatric Clinical Nurse Specialist) and a MA in Clinical Ethics and Religious Studies, all from the University of Virginia. Dr. Vittone's clinical interests are in pediatric health. She teaches undergraduate and graduate students in Ethics and professional formation in the School of Nursing. She has been an Engelhard Fellow since 2008. She was inducted into the GUMC Teaching Academy as a Principal Member in 2015. She received the Faculty Achievement in Education at GUMC Convocation in 2019. Dr Vittone was inducted as an honorary member of Alpha Sigma Nu and was the invited speaker in 2019. In 2021, she was recognized with her peers Drs. Slota, McGlothlin, Crowell with the Provost's Award for Innovation in Education.
Dr. Vittone has 25+ years experience in clinical ethics consultation and since 2007 has been a primary consultant with the Ethics Consultation Service of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics here at GUMC and MGUH. Her clinical ethics interests are in complex decision making, surrogate decision makers, and issues at the interface of vulnerable populations and health systems. She also provides ethics education to the MGUH nurse residency program. Since 2011, Dr. Vittone has received grant support for her work in human protection and research ethics for the Clinical and Translational Sciences Award with Georgetown-Howard Universities-Veterans Administration- Oak Ridge National Lab and Medstar Health Research Institute as a Research Subject Advocate. She teaches Research Ethics for the Masters in Clinical and Translational Research program. She teaches Advanced Ethical Reasoning and the Ethics Consultation Intensive for the Catholic Clinical Ethics Masters program. She also currently serves on IRB-E, and the Adverse Events/DSMB Committee (CAESM) at Georgetown University. Dr. Vittone has been a speaker at a number of national meetings on nursing, and ethics, including the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; and the National Teaching Institute-American Association Critical Care Nurses Annual Conference, International Association of Clinical Research Nurses and the National Press Foundation.