Dr. Elizabeth Peter’s scholarship reflects her interdisciplinary background in nursing, philosophy and bioethics. Theoretically, she locates her work in feminist health care ethics which aligns her scholarly pursuits both substantively and methodologically. She has pursued interrelated areas of scholarship, including those focusing on innovations in theory and methodology, home and community care ethics, and research ethics.

Her theoretical and methodological work is advancing the concepts of moral identity, moral agency, vulnerability, moral competency, and moral distress. She has also used metaethics to develop a critical narrative approach for qualitative research in healthcare ethics.

She is currently the Principal Investigator of a study, funded by the University of Toronto COVID-19 Action Initiative, that is exploring how to prevent and diminish the moral distress of nurses caring for patients with COVID-19.

She is also a Principal Investigator on a CIHR funded study to examine the patient, family and clinician experience from an ethical, legal, and social perspective as care transitions from hospital to home using new monitoring technology. (The SMARTVIEW, Covered: Technology Enabled remote monitoring and Self-Management – Vision for patient Empowerment following Cardiac and Vascular surgery)

She serves as an associate editor for Nursing Ethics and the vice chair of the bioethics expert panel of the American Academy of Nursing.

She is the recipient of a U of T Nursing Teaching Award for Excellence in Educational Leadership and the Christine Harrison Education Award for Integration of Theory & Practice.

Dr. Peter is the Chair of the Ethics Review Board at Public Health Ontario and a member of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at U of T.