Werdie van Staden is Nelson Mandela Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry and director of the Centre for Ethics and Philosophy of Health Sciences at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, with a clinical attachment as honorary psychiatrist at Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital. He is chair of the World Psychiatric Association’s Section for Philosophy and Humanities in Psychiatry.

Werdie has been teaching Values Based Practice (VBP) since 2003 to medical students as well as medical specialists and various kinds of health practitioners for purposes of their continued professional development. He has been developing and publishing on an African version of VBP, premised on a batho pele orientation.

He is a consultant psychiatrist and philosopher and teaching VBP to 2^nd year medical students, MPhil-students and to various medical specialists. His publications in the field of health ethics are mostly related if not directly about VBP. Werdie directs an MPhil-programme in Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health and supervises several PhD-students. He is chairperson of the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Pretoria, and editor of the South African Journal of Psychiatry; Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology; International Journal of Person-Centred Medicine; and Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine.