Continuing Education

John A. Mulder, MD

Vice President of Medical Services, Faith Hospice Medical Director, Grand Rapids, MI

Dr. Mulder, started his career as a family practice physician in 1983, coached families through the ups and downs of life, through strep throat and stitches, new babies and broken bones. After a year in family practice, Mulder was asked to be board member and later part-time medical director of Harbor Hospice, a post he held while he continued to practice. The healer has come full circle, Dr. Mulder has extensive palliative care and hospice background, with more than two decades of experience in end-of-life care. As a specialist in end-of-life care, he helps people find comfort and peace as they prepare to die and has become a nationally recognized authority on en-of-life issues, including pain and symptom management.

He was chairman of the board of the relief group International Aid for years and has gone on medical missions to Kenya, Russia, Romania, Somalia, China and Tibet, sometimes traveling from village to village on an elephant.

Dr. Mulder was certified as a hospice and palliative medicine specialist by the American Board of Hospice and Palliative Medicine in 2000. That year he also became vice president of medical services and chief medical officer of Alive Hospice in Nashville, Tennessee, one of the larger hospice organizations in the country. While he was there, he also taught at Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine, teaching the next generation of physicians about the hospice side of medicine. He was instrumental in the development of a comprehensive palliative care program at the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. He currently holds appointments as a professor at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and Vanderbilt University Nursing School. In 2006, Dr. Mulder moved back to Michigan to become Vice President of Medical Services for Faith Hospices.