Silvia Perez-Protto

Silvia Perez-Protto, MD, MS, MBA is a staff member at the Intensive Care and Resuscitation Department at the Cleveland Clinic, and Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She is the medical director of the End of Life Center at the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Perez-Protto earned her medical degree and post-graduate intensive care medicine and organ donation specialist degrees from Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay. She worked as an intensivist and transplant coordinator, conducting more than 100 organ donation interviews before relocating to the US in 2006, and completed her anesthesiology residency and critical care fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. She served as the president of the Ohio Chapter of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine in 2021.

As the medical director of the End of Life Center, Dr. Perez-Protto has designed and implemented the Advance Care Planning program at the Cleveland Clinic, with the aim of delivering goal-concordant care. She has co-led the implementation of "The Pause" to honor the person who dies at the hospital and the care provided by the healthcare team, and has co-created "The Pause" App and Death over Dinner for Healthcare to foster caregiver resilience related to end of life care.