Mary Grossman
School of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Dr. Mary Grossman 's nursing career has spanned more than 30 years across McGill University's School of Nursing and its University- affiliated hospitals. She has served in a number of leadership positions across clinical, teaching, research, and administrative arms of practice. Two overarching themes have distinguished her career: a focus on the interrelationships among concepts related to emotional distress, healing and resilience; secondly, the key tenets of what constitutes academic practice in the clinical setting. Dr. Grossman has sought to marry these two interests through the development of a conceptual model. It became increasingly evident that a whole person approach to care necessitated integrated knowledge of the biology and psychology of the person in the face of acute and prolonged adversity. This model served as the predicate for the recently published book: Promoting Healing and Resilience in People with Cancer: A Nursing Perspective (Springer, 2022).
Ira Byock
Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine
Hanover, NH, USA
Ira Byock, M.D., FAAHPM is a leading palliative care physician, author, and public advocate for improving care through the end of life. He is Founder of the Institute for Human Caring at Providence St. Joseph Health. Dr. Byock is Active Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Community & Family Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Dr. Byock has been involved in hospice and palliative care since 1978. His research has contributed to conceptual frameworks for the lived experience of illness along a continuum from suffering to wellbeing; measures for subjective quality of life during illness; and counseling methods to support life completion. Dr. Byock has authored numerous articles in academic journals. His first book, Dying Well (1997) has become a standard in the field of hospice and palliative care. The Four Things That Matter Most (2004) is widely used as a counseling tool within palliative care as well as pastoral care. The Best Care Possible (2012) tackles the crisis that surrounds illness and dying in America and the transformation that is possible. Dr. Byock lectures nationally and internationally.
Meredith Fox
Nanuet Union Free School District
NY, USA
Meredith Fox, Ph.D., is a passionate educator with 17 years of experience in public education. She began her career as a special education teacher in the Nanuet School District and went on to complete a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration from Fordham University. Upon completion of that degree, she expanded her role by taking on the position of Committee on Special Education/Preschool Special Education Chairperson. Dr. Fox then moved into the role of Assistant Superintendent for several years before becoming the Deputy Superintendent, the position she currently holds in Nanuet.
Dr. Fox completed her doctoral studies in Educational Leadership, Management, and Policy at Seton Hall University. Her doctoral research has been published numerous times in professional journals and was most recently cited during testimony on standardized testing to the New Jersey Joint Committee on Public Schools.
Allen Steverman
Department of Family Medicine,Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Dr. Allen Steverman is a physician with a focused practice in chronic pain and a particular interest in mindfulness-based approaches to chronic pain management. He is an attending physician at the Pain clinic of the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine at the Université de Montréal and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University. He is actively involved in medical education and clinical supervision, with a focus on pain management as well as communications skills in medicine.
Philippe Karazivan
Department of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine, Université de Montréal
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Philippe Karazivan, M.D., is a Family Doctor and holds a master's degree in academic health sciences education. He practices at the Notre-Dame Family Medicine Clinic in Montreal, where he carries out his clinical and supervisory activities with students and residents of family medicine.
He is Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine at Université de Montréal, associate researcher at the CHUM Research Center and author of the founding article of the patient-partner approach in Academic Medicine, April 2015. He is also co-director of the master's program in academic health sciences education at the Université de Montréal.
He is currently working on the creation and implementation of the world's first master's research program on patients and health professionals partnership.
Krista Lawlor
Maison St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Center
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Krista Lawlor, M.D., is the Medical Director at Maison St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Center, a non-profit charitable organization that was created to build and operate a palliative care home and day centre that will offer free, high-quality palliative care in one of the most densely populated areas of Montreal. Krista has been practicing palliative care since 1999 and was the Director of Education for Palliative Care McGill from 2000 - 2005. She is teaching mindful medical practice to medical students at McGill University.
Fred Hafferty
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, MN, USA
Frederic W. Hafferty is Senior Fellow, Center for Ethics, Professionalism, and the Future of Medicine: Office of the President and Chief Executive Officer, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. He is Emeritus Professor Mayo Clinic, the University of Minnesota, and Adjunct Professor, Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine. He is past chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. He received his undergraduate degree in Social Relations from Harvard in 1969 and his Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from Yale in 1976. He is the author of Into the Valley: Death and the Socialization of Medical Students (Yale University Press); The Changing Medical Profession: An International Perspective (Oxford University Press), with John McKinlay; Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Field of Inquiry (Springer) with Brian Castellani, The Hidden Curriculum in Health Professions Education (Dartmouth College Press) with Joseph O'Donnell, Understanding Professionalism (Lange) with Wendy Levinson, Katherine Lucy, and Shiphra Ginsburg and Place and Health as Complex Systems: A Case study and Empirical Test (Springer) with Brian Castellani, Rajeev Rajaram, J. Galen Buckwalter and Michael Ball. He currently sits on both the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) standing committee on Ethics and Professionalism, ABMS Professionalism Task Force, and the ABMS Stakeholder Council, and on the editorial board of Academic Medicine. Research focuses on the evolution of medicine’s’ professionalism movement, mapping social networks within medical education, the application of complexity theory to medical training, issues of medical socialization, and disability studies.
Steven Jordan
Faculty of Education, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Steven Jordan, Ph.D., currently works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE), McGill University. Steven’s research focuses on the theory and practice of participatory action research and qualitative research methodologies. He also has research interests in labour history and critical sociology.
Maryam Wagner
Institute of Health Sciences Education, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Maryam Wagner, B.Sc., B.Ed., M.Ed., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Health Sciences Education and a program lead for the Assessment and Evaluation Unit at McGill University. Dr. Wagner completed her doctoral studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto focusing on students’ use of cognitively diagnostic feedback for advancing writing. Her research is broadly situated in educational assessment. She has participated in a variety of research investigations including tracking medical students’ learning progressions in technology-rich learning environments, a validation study of a language assessment framework, and the development and validation of a multimodal scenario-based assessment system. She was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship which she pursued at Carleton University working on diagnosing and supporting engineering students’ writing. Additionally, Maryam has acquired expertise in a range of research methods and methodologies including mixed methods research design.
Catherine-Anne Miller
Ingram School of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Catherine Ann-Miller, R.N., M.HSc., is a full-time faculty lecturer at McGill Ingram School of Nursing. She completed her undergraduate degree in Nursing at McGill and her graduate degree in health promotion and global health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Prior to becoming a full time lecturer, she devoted many years to the MUHC neuroscience mission, most notably in her role as a clinical nurse specialist in the brain tumour program. She also worked in the community, including her role as a nursing advisor in a government hospital in a war-torn region of Nepal (2004-2005). She was awarded the Award for Excellence in Neuroscience from the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada and the ISoN Award for Excellence in Preceptorship/Advising in 2015. She currently teaches core theory and clinical community health nursing courses in the 3rd year of the undergraduate program and a graduate course in the Global Health concentration.
Tom Hutchinson
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Tom Hutchinson, M.B., graduated in Medicine from the National University of Ireland with honours in 1971. He trained as an Internist and Nephrologist at McGill University from 1972-1976. Concern for the lived experience of patients with kidney and other chronic diseases, as well as for their caregivers, led Dr. Hutchinson to meet pioneering therapist Virginia Satir in 1986, to complete a 4 year training course in Family Therapy at the McGill Institute for Community Psychiatry in 1995 and to publish a book on the stories of kidney patients in 1998.
In 2002, in order to enlarge his focus on the quality of patients’ lived experience, Dr. Hutchinson changed his clinical practice to Palliative Medicine and joined Dr. Balfour Mount in developing McGill Programs in Whole Person Care. Since 2005, the Programs have taught healing in medicine to all medical students throughout all 4 years of the new Physicianship Curriculum at McGill. Dr. Hutchinson edited the first academic book on Whole Person Care that was published by Springer in 2011, Whole Person Care: A New Paradigm for the 21st Century. In 2012, he was named to the Faculty Honour List for Teaching Excellence at McGill in recognition of “outstanding contributions to education in the Faculty of Medicine”. In 2017, Dr. Hutchinson published a new single author book outlining the vision and implications of whole person care Whole Person Care: Transforming Healthcare published by Springer, and in 2019 he co-authored with Dr. Stephen Liben a book on Mindful Medical Practice course which offers a comprehensive approach to teaching pre-clerkship medical students -- as well as residents and even experienced physicians -- about the transformational impact of mindful medical practice, or mindful whole person care.
Hilton Koppe
Writer, Doctor, Workshop Facilitator
Lennox Head, NSW, Australia
Hilton Koppe, M.D., is a writer, workshop facilitator, podcaster and doctor living on Bundjalung land on the east coast of Australia. Hilton facilitates reflective writing workshops for doctors and other health professionals with the goal of deepening their compassion, overcoming professional isolation and reducing risk of burnout. The workshops have been adapted for people living with chronic and mental illnesses, as well as enthusiastic amateur writers. Hilton has been invited to present his workshops all the way from Byron Writers Festival to Harvard Medical School.
Hilton’s memoir, One Curious Doctor (2022), explores the personal impact of working as a country doctor. His play, Enduring Witness, is used to facilitate conversations about end-of-life care. Hilton is co-host of Dementia In Practice, a top 100 Great Australian Pod.
Mark Smilovitch
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Mark Smilovitch, M.D., is an active member in the Division of Cardiology of the McGill University Health Centre with a strong clinical interest in Prevention and Cardiac Rehabilitation. Committed to Medical Education development, he is a past Program Director of the Adult Cardiology Training Program at McGill. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and is currently involved in Postgraduate Medical Education with a focus on Professionalism, as well as Undergraduate Medical Education activities including the teaching of Physicianship to Medical Students with an emphasis on simulation-based learning.
Elizabeth Anne Kinsella
Institute of Health Sciences Education, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Elizabeth Anne Kinsella, BScOT, MAdEd, Ph.D., is Director and Full Professor in the Institute of Health Sciences Education (IHSE), in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, and associate member in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, at McGill University. Professor Kinsella holds a PhD in Education, a Master’s of Adult Education, and a BSc in Occupational Therapy.
Professor Kinsella’s interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on professional education, practice, and policy in health and social care professions, with interests in reflective/reflexive practices, conceptions of professional knowledge, epistemic justice, ethics, mindfulness, embodiment, and phronesis. Her work draws on theoretically informed interpretive and critical research methodologies in the qualitative tradition.
She has published over 100 articles and book chapters, written a workbook on Reflective Practice and Professional Knowledge, and edited three books: Phronesis as Professional Knowledge: Practical Wisdom in the Professions; Mobilizing Knowledge: Critical Reflections on Foundations and Practices; and Embodiment and Professional Education: Body, Practice, Pedagogy. Her research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). She is currently Principal Investigator on a SSHRC funded project on ‘Mindfulness in the Caring Professions’, and co-investigator on a number of SSHRC and other research projects investigating health professions education, policy, and practice.
Timothy H. Wideman
School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Timothy Wideman, Ph.D., is a physiotherapist and Associate Professor in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, at McGill University. The overarching goal of Dr. Wideman’s research and teaching at McGill is to improve care for people living with pain. His research aims to help clinicians better understand and address suffering associated with pain, and to improve how future health professionals are trained to care for people living with pain. Dr. Wideman is also the current Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Whole Person Care.
Patricia Lynn Dobkin
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Patricia Dobkin, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and has been a faculty member in the Department of Medicine at McGill University for the past 30 years. She is affiliated with McGill Programs in Whole Person Care. Dr. Dobkin obtained her PhD in Clinical Psychology in the United States, interned at Rochester (New York) Medical Center and completed her post-doctoral training at McGill University. Her specialty is Mind-Body Medicine. Dr. Dobkin has published >150 articles and book chapters in medical and psychological journals and has presented her work internationally in various conference venues. She works in English and French.
On September 30, 2015, we celebrated the publication of the first book edited by Dr. Patricia Dobkin: Mindful Medical Practice. Clinicians from 5 countries narrate how mindfulness enhances the quality of patient/client care, adding depth and meaning to their lives and work. The book was published by Springer Press (2015). She has written a second book with Dr. Craig Hassed: Mindful Medical Practitioners: A Guide for Clinicians and Educators published by Springer International Publishing in 2016.
Dr. Dobkin has provided and studied psychosocial programs entitled, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness-Based Medical Practice for the past 18 years. While most research pertaining to these programs show positive mental and physical health outcomes, relatively few have examined the processes underlying these benefits. Moreover, there is a paucity of research about how MBSR impacts health professionals’ well-being. Dr. Dobkin is a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Teacher.
Andre F. Lijoi
WellSpan, York Hospital
York, PA, USA
Andre F. Lijoi, M.D., DABFM, CAQ-GER, is the Associate Program Director of the WellSpan/York Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. He joined the faculty in 1995 after 4 years with the Public Health Service in eastern Kentucky and 8 years of private practice in Hanover, PA. He is a 1980 graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed residency at the University of Maryland in 1983 where he served as chief resident. He has practiced full-spectrum Family Medicine throughout his career, having only recently stopped his OB practice in July. He holds certification of added qualification in Geriatrics.
He completed the Certification of Professional Achievement in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University in 2019. He has developed a Narrative Medicine curriculum for Family Medicine residents and is studying its impact on their professional development. He has deployed narrative methods across his institution to support the health caring professionals serving patients during the COVID 19 pandemic. He has presented his work nationally and internationally.
He believes that Narrative Medicine practice is at the cutting edge of patient engagement and professional and personal development. When asked about his interest in patient’s stories he replied, “Patient stories…I (he) can’t work without them!”
Nick Hamilton
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nick Hamilton is a sommelier who conducts thematic workshops and gastronomic-gourmet evenings and tastings.
Dan Goldman
Teresa Dellar Palliative Care Residence
Kirkland, Quebec, Canada
Dan Goldman, MA, MTA, is a board-certified music therapist with experience working in numerous clinical settings. Currently, he is the music therapist at the Teresa Dellar Palliative Care Residence in Kirkland, Quebec. He believes that every individual possesses an inborn musical wisdom that guides them towards psychological and spiritual wellbeing. During music therapy sessions, creative and emotional expression is promoted and validated. Patients and their families are offered opportunities to engage in a variety of musical experiences, which promote bonding and facilitate communication through challenging life stages. Dan holds an MA in Creative Arts Therapies, from Concordia University, Montreal; as well as a Graduate Diploma in Mindfulness Studies from Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM). His graduate research investigated the intersection between mindfulness meditation and music therapy.
Anne Lacourse
St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Centre
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Anne Lacourse, MTA, is a music therapist who has worked in palliative care, with patients and their families for 17 years. She was part of the oncology and palliative care team at St. Mary's Hospital for 13 years and now works at the St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Center since its opening in the fall of 2019. For her, music is a pretext to enter into a relationship and create a bond with others, presence is at the center of her approach, very human and full of sensitivity. Much of her work is based on creative approaches, she uses a lot of improvisation and composition in her interventions. Legacy work is also an integral part of the support she wishes to offer to the people she supports.