Dr. Patricia Dobkin

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r. Dobkin 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 15 years. She is affiliated with McGill Programs in Whole Person Care and she teaches undergraduate and medical students out of the Departments of Social Studies in Medicine and Psychology. 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 ≈100 works (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.

Dr. Dobkin’s research aims to advance understanding of the processes which underlie the link between biological and psychosocial phenomena in medical patients. She conducts clinical trials of psychosocial interventions aimed at improving patient’s mental and physical health outcomes. In 2004-2005 she took her sabbatical leave to work with the Quebec Health Technology Assessment Agency. At the request of the Ministry of Health and Social Services, she wrote a report entitled, “Management of chronic (non-cancer) pain: Organization of health services.” Other areas of research include: patients’ adaptation to early arthritis; predictors of relapse in patients with Crohn’s disease; multimodal treatment for fibromyalgia; determinants of quality of life in juvenile idiopathic arthritis; and adherence to treatment recommendations across patient populations. These funded studies are conducted with multidisciplinary teams including rheumatologists, gastroenterologists, physiotherapists, and statisticians.

Dr. Dobkin's work with the McGill Programs in Whole Person Care involves providing Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs for patients with chronic illness and health professionals serving them. She is investigating both the processes and outcomes of this program. Her doctoral student, Ms. Julie Ann Irving (who is currently an intern at Princeton Medical Center) is conducting quantitative and qualitative studies on the Mindfulness-Based Medical Practice course with 51 physicians and other health care professionals co-led by Drs. Dobkin and her colleague and Director of McGill Programs in Whole Person Care, Tom Hutchinson (a palliative care physician).

In the context of the Physicianship 4 course for the 4th year medical students Dr. Dobkin leads an elective entitled, Mindful Medical Practice, each year.

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