Expert Overview

I am committed to helping fellow physicians address the challenges they are encountering in their professional lives so that they can experience ongoing personal satisfaction and professional fulfillment.

Client and Business Focus:

My clients are physicians who are encountering challenges in their professional lives that are leading to self-doubt and uncertainty, to difficulties in communicating with others, to career goals not being met and to a feeling of futility and personal exhaustion - and all of this may be having a dreadful impact on the physician’s personal and family life.

I understand these challenges as arising from within a complex context that includes the organizational environment in which the physician is working, the physician’s professional relationships and the physician’s internal psychological life. And I attend to the three domains of this context to facilitate the development of physician client’s understanding of themselves within the context of both their professional relationships and their organizational environment. And I encourage a physician to take into consideration the impact of their struggles with professional challenges upon their personal and family life.

A physician’s style of communicating with others is often an area of concern as difficulties in communication often lead to impairments in a physician’s capacity to cooperate and to collaborate with their co-workers. And, of course, difficulties in communications may exist in a physician’s home life. Physician coaching with respect to communication increases a physician’s self-awareness and helps them to think about the impact on others of their current style of communication. A physician’s style of communication can be changed and the quality of relationships at work - and at home - can be improved.

Background and Experience:

In my 30 years of experience as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst I have worked with many physicians facing complex and often inter-related professional and personal challenges.
And my recent training with the Physician Coaching Institute has enabled me to focus my attention more exclusively on the process of coaching physician clients to reflect upon and to effectively address the current challenge they are facing.

My past experience has taught me about the importance of providing a safe, respectful, thoughtful and fully confidential environment in which a physician will be able to explore their current challenge - and its multifaceted origins - and will then be able to develop a plan of action for dealing with the challenge effectively.

My past clinical experience has also taught me to be openly receptive to unconscious communications, to thoughtfully reflect on these communications and then to facilitate the development of a personal insight – insight that both enhances the physician’s understanding of the challenge they have encountered and clarifies for them the goal they need to achieve.
So I bring my background and experience as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst to the process of physician coaching process. And, in keeping with the International Coach Federation, I am committed to "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential."

Education and Credentials:

Education and Credentials:

• 1968 BA Sociology, University of Toronto.
  1973MD, University of Toronto.
  1974-1979 Practice of Family Medicine in Manitouwadge – an isolated mining community in Northwestern Ontario.
  1979 -1983 Residency in Psychiatry - F.R.C.P.C.
  1984 Graduate of the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis.
  1984 - 2014 Private practice in psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
  1993-1994 President of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society.
  2007 MA in Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Shefield, England.
  2015 Certified Physician Development Coach (PIC).

I work with physicians in person, on the phone and on Skype.