About Us

Thomas Attig, PhD and applied philosopher, is the author of Catching Your Breath in Grief...and grace will lead you home, How We Grieve: Relearning the World, and The Heart of Grief: Death and the Search for Lasting Love. He is Past President of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. To learn more about him and his work, he invites you to visit his web site at www.griefsheart.com.

Robert Beringer has a Master’s Degree in Gerontology from Simon Fraser University. His research for his M.A. degree was focused on gerontechnology and aging-in-place.

Sarah Brown is a clinical nurse specialist with expertise in palliative care and geriatrics. She has a particular interest in pain management and the end of life care needs of the elderly in all clinical settings. As a member of the Canadian Virtual Hospice clinical team, Sarah helps develop and review clinical health information for virtualhospice.ca and answers questions submitted to Ask a Professional.

Fred Burge is a Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. His research interests lie in health services research in Primary Healthcare (PHC). At the moment, he leads a large provincial mortality follow back study to examine unmet healthcare needs of the dying.

Susan Cadell is a Professor and Director of the School of Social Work at Renison University College, University of Waterloo, and an Associate Professor and Director of the Manulife Centre for Healthy Living in the Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.  She is a member of several multidisciplinary research teams in pediatric palliative care.
 

Elizabeth Causton  has a Master’s  Degree in Social Work and has worked in the field for over 40 years.  Fourteen of those years were spent at Victoria Hospice, where she worked as a clinical counsellor on the community crisis team

Cheryl is the Director of Operations with Canadian Virtual Hospice. Across her career, she has held leadership, strategic policy, program development, and education roles with post-secondary institutions, government, and paramedic services. She is an advocate for paramedic integration into healthcare and is currently supporting numerous paramedic services across Canada to embed palliative care approaches into paramedicine. 

Dr. Stephen Claxton-Oldfield is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Mount Allison University. His main area of research focuses on the people who volunteer in hospice palliative care. He is interested in what motivates people to volunteer in hospice palliative care, the roles that volunteers play in hospice palliative care, the impact of volunteering on the volunteers as well as on the dying person’s family, how to retain volunteers, and so on.

Madeleine Cole is a family doctor who lives and works in Iqaluit, Nunavut.  Despite growing up in downtown Toronto, she is the anomaly that has found professional and personal happiness in a small northern community. She has a longstanding commitment to sexual health and reproductive rights and remains passionate about improving the health of Inuit.

Paul received his B.Sc. Hons (Distinction) in Life Sciences from Queen’s University, and his M.Sc. (Distinction) in Immunology from the University of Oxford. Currently in his final year of medical school at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Paul has accepted a residency position in General Surgery at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. An avid performer, who trained and acted professionally prior to medical school, Paul conducts research using verbatim theatre in medical education.

Pamela Durepos is a doctoral nursing student at McMaster in the second year of her program. She graduated from McMaster with her Master's of Science degree in 2014 and has been employed at Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation in the Neurotrauma Intensive Care Unit for the past 13 years.

Rachel Ehrlich is a graduate of McGill University with a B.A. in Psychology. In 2010 she was employed in the Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care department at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Ontario.

Mei Lan Fang is an academic fellow in communications and community engagement with AGE-WELL Networks of Centres of Excellence and a researcher with the Gerontology Research Centre at Simon Fraser University.

Catherine Frazee, Professor Emerita in Disability Studies, blogs intermittently at http://fragileandwild.com and is an active advisor for the Vulnerable Persons Standard at http://www.vps-npv.ca. She spends her time worrying about autonomy run amok and seeking out kinder, gentler understandings of vulnerability and dependence.

Dr. Emily Freeman’s research focus within the area of psychosocial oncology is concerned with post-traumatic growth and advanced disease. She conducts qualitative investigations examining the experience of patients with the health care system after a diagnosis of advanced cancer.

Dr. Michael Gordon, born in New York, attended medical school at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. After graduation in 1966 he pursued post-graduate training in many countries, settling in Toronto Canada in 1973.

Marie-Claude Grégoire is a pediatrician who completed a joint fellowship in pediatric pain and palliative care after her medical and pediatric training at Université de Montréal. She has a special interest in symptoms management in children who cannot self-report. Dr Grégoire is a staff physician with the pediatric palliative care service at the IWK Health Centre and an assistant professor of Pediatrics & Anesthesia at Dalhousie University. Marie-Claude is a founding member of the Royal College of Physician & Surgeons Pain Medicine speciality and a member of the examination committee. 

Dr. Daphna Grossman is a palliative care physician at North York General Hospital and a palliative care consultant at Baycrest Health Science, where she provides palliative care support to patients in acute care as well as to residents in long term care.

Dr. Strachan is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at McMaster University where she teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs. Her research broadly focuses on communication issues involving patients with heart failure and end-of-life planning and care. She previously completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Cardiovascular Nursing Research from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario and was a post-doctoral trainee with the FUTURE Program for Cardiovascular Nurse Scientists. Patricia currently represents the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada on the Quality End-of-Life Care Coalition of Canada where she is Co-Chair of the Research Committee.

Dr. Hawley is the Royal College representative to the Conjoint Advisory Committee on Palliative Care.  Dr. Hawley completed Internal Medicine training in New Zealand in 1986 after completing medical school and internship in England. She moved to Vancouver to work with Julio Montaner in HIV research, then completed Canadian Internal Medicine certification in Vancouver, including a 2-year self-directed Palliative Medicine fellowship.
 

Dr. Lorraine Holtslander is a Professor and Graduate Chair in the College of Nursing at the University of Saskatchewan. Her clinical area is in Palliative Home Care while the focus of her research is palliative care, grief and loss, and supporting family caregivers during bereavement.

Kristen holds a faculty position at Lakehead University School of Nursing and is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Education. She has professional experience in acute care, correctional nursing, clinical instructing, simulation technologies, and undergraduate nursing education. She is a research affiliate with the Centre for Education and Research on Aging and Health and her areas of interest are: ethics (everyday ethical issues, ethics in the community care setting, and moral distress), community nursing practice, palliative care, mental health nursing, cultural competency, interprofessional education, and high-fidelity simulation.

Dr. Sharon Kaasalainen is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at McMaster University, an associate member of the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster, and an Honorary Professor at Queen’s University in Belfast.

Anne Katz, RN, PhD, is a clinical nurse specialist and sexuality counselor at CancerCare Manitoba. She holds an adjunct appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Nursing. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the topic of sexuality and cancer and has been invited to speak on the topic nationally and internationally.

Mary Lou Kelley, MSW, PhD, is a Professor of Social Work and Gerontology at Lakehead University and professor at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Thunder Bay, ON. Her work focuses on promoting interdisciplinary research and interprofessional education in gerontology and palliative care for healthcare professionals nationally. Her research expertise is in community-based and applied health services research, using ethnographic and participatory methods including techniques such as photo voice. Here current projects focus on developing palliative care programs in long term care homes and First Nations communities. She was the recipient of the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association’s 2011 Award of Excellence in recognition of her contribution to Canadian palliative care practice, education and research.

Kathy Kortes-Miller, HBMT, MSW, is a PhD candidate and a sessional lecturer at Lakehead University.  Kathy has worked as the curriculum developer in palliative care education at the Centre for Education and Research on Aging and Health (CERAH)  and on the Hospice Unit at St Joseph's Caregroup. She is a member of the board of directors for Hospice Northwest. She is a research affiliate with the Centre for Education and Research on Aging and Health and her research interests include enhancing palliative and end-of-life care education, interprofessional education, high fidelity simulation and mentorship. 

Dr. Librach is the W. Gifford-Jones Professor in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto, where he also holds the position of full professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine.

Chris is a psychologist and Director of Training at Psychologie Mont Royal, a private clinic located in Montreal. In this role he sees individuals, couples, and families while overseeing the internship and apprenticeship programs of the practice. Prior to this position, he worked as a palliative care psychologist for almost 10 years at the McGill University Health Center.

Dr. Susan McClement is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Manitoba, and a Research Associate of the Manitoba Palliative Care Research Unit at CancerCare Manitoba. Her research interests include in psychosocial issues related to food and fluids in advanced illness and ethical issues in palliative care.
 

Sue Muirhead is a lover of deep connections, with others, the wind, the wild.  She is committed to sinking into the profound and meaningful aspects or our human existence – hence her longing to share her life lived knowledge and experience of dying, death and home funerals.

Dr. Jeff Myers is a palliative medicine physician and Head of Sunnybrook Health Science Centre's Palliative Care Consult Team in Toronto.

Dr. Natarajan is a new family physician working in rural New Brunswick.

Anton Nikouline is a 2nd year medical student at the University of Toronto. He has completed a bachelor of medical sciences at the University of Western Ontario before entrance into medical school.

Michelle O’Rourke, RN, MA, is a Unit Clinical Leader in the Emergency Department at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance. Besides nursing she spent sixteen years in pastoral ministry for the Roman Catholic Diocese of London and currently coordinates the Foundations in Parish Nursing education program. 

Barbara Pesut PhD, RN is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia and holds a Canada Research Chair in Health, Ethics and Diversity. Her thirty year career in nursing has included roles in clinical practice, education, leadership and research. Her program of research seeks to improve end-of-life care for persons and their families residing in rural communities through innovative healthcare delivery models and education.

Dr. Charlotte Pooler is a Clinician Scientist with Palliative End of Life Care and Community Programs, Continuing Care, Edmonton Zone, Alberta Health Services and Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta. She focused on symptoms (pain, breathlessness), comfort, suffering, ethics and qualitative research in her MN (Calgary) and PhD (Alberta).

Lisa is a registered social worker who focuses her professional and creative energy on supporting children, youth and young adults through tough situations with a focus on the intersections of anxiety, trauma and grief. 

Dr. Kerstin Stieber Roger is Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Social Sciences at the Faculty of Human Ecology, University of Manitoba. Dr. Roger holds a Masters in Education (Applied Psychology) from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, and, a PhD in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education from the University of Toronto.
 

 Michael Sangster is a Physiotherapist and Clinical Specialist (Pain Science) and a graduate of the Dalhousie University School of Physiotherapy in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His primary clinical interests are Pain Management and Global Health. A leader in Physiotherapy practice, Mike is committed to clinical advancement through mentorship, professional practice consulting, and teaching. 

Dr. Senderovich is a physician with practice focused on Geriatrics, Palliative Care, and Pain Medicine. She is actively involved in teaching medical students and residents.

Erica G. Srinivasan is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin—La Crosse, where she also serves as the Director for the Center for Grief and Death Education, is Co-Chair for the Gerontology Emphasis, and is on the Planning Committee for the University’s International Conference on Death, Grief and Bereavement. 

Eric Stephanson is the Spiritual Care Leader at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has held that position since 1996. He has presented on themes related to this article at various conferences nationally and internationally.
 

Dr. Joanne Stephen is a clinician-scientist with the BC Cancer Agency. She works locally, nationally, and internationally with clinicians, researchers, community stakeholders and program leaders to increase psychosocial oncology knowledge and access to psychosocial interventions.
 

Dr. Tamara Sussman is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at McGill University. She obtained her undergraduate and master’s degrees at McGill University, and a PhD in Social Work at the University of Toronto, followed by a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program at the University of Waterloo.

Lysa Toye is a Master’s-trained Social Worker and Expressive Arts Therapist with a collaborative certificate in Palliative and Supportive Care, and has worked in pediatric and adult health, mental health, and palliative care settings for over a decade. 

Catherine has been a clinical counsellor at the Vancouver Island Cancer Centre in Victoria, BC, since 1994. She provides individual, couple, and family counselling as well as facilitates support groups. Catherine specializes in Somatic Therapy – a leading edge counselling approach based on understanding the impact of chronic stress and trauma on the brain and nervous system.

Dr. Anna Voeuk completed her medical degree at the University of Calgary.  She worked as a rural family physician prior to completing her fellowship training in palliative care through the University of Alberta.  She currently works as a palliative care physician in Canada.