CIPC Blog

Tell us about your upcoming virtual workshop on chronic pain and what excites you about delivering educational content on transforming chronic pain care in primary care?

As a faculty member in the UMass Center for Integrated Primary Care, I am very excited to be leading our upcoming course, Working Together: Treating the Whole Person with Chronic Pain. This six-hour interactive workshop will take place Friday, December 6th and interdisciplinary clinicians will learn how to treat patients with chronic pain through a team based approach.

My background includes a variety of clinical experiences focusing on management of chronic pain in both inpatient and outpatient settings, in individual and group formats, as well as a wide range of medical and mental health comorbidities. The experience of chronic pain, and related impacts on functioning, can significantly affect not only the lives of individuals suffering from chronic pain, but also others within their social context, including the providers that care for them. I’m passionate about training others in this important area of work because doing so has the potential to improve both the care that individual patients receive as well as the well-being of those providing such care.

Our upcoming training will equip clinicians with skills to address chronic pain holistically. Key learning objectives include recognizing the impact of psychosocial factors, integrating behavioral strategies to improve patient outcomes, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration to treat the whole person. Attendees will gain actionable insights to enhance their clinical approach to pain management, focusing on patient-centered, evidence-based care. You can register for the training here. 

Can you tell us more about your role in the Department of Family Medicine & Community Health here at UMass Chan?

I am a clinical psychologist and faculty member in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at UMass Chan Medical School, where I care for patients in a rural family medicine residency practice, the Barre Family Health Center. I’m also a faculty member in the Worcester Family Medicine Residency, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary of training Family Physicians.

My clinical interests include providing brief, evidence-based interventions in integrated primary care with an emphasis on patient-centered and trauma-informed care. Throughout my training, I have had several experiences in learning and delivering interventions for chronic pain management, behavioral sleep medicine, health behavior change, and chronic disease management. I really enjoy working with patients across the lifespan and providing care to individuals, couples, and families. My approach is integrative and informed by solution-focused, cognitive-behavioral, and mindfulness and acceptance-based treatment approaches. I am especially committed to incorporating patients’ unique life experiences and personal values into the care I provide in primary care.

In my capacity as a physician educator, I deliver both didactic and experiential components of the behavioral science curriculum, including live observation of clinical encounters, video reviews, and joint patient care with family medicine resident physicians to support the development of behavioral science competencies. My teaching expertise and interests focus on patient-centered communication, biopsychosocial conceptualization and treatment planning, and skills in diagnosis and management of behavioral health conditions in the primary care environment within an integrated, team-based approach to care. My approach to teaching also prioritizes residents’ self-identified learning goals based on their values and future goals as a physician. I’m committed to advocating for and supporting physician well-being, and to educate residents on the risks of burnout and help them build an understanding of their own individualized wellness needs and related strategies to support them throughout their training and career.

What is your educational background?

I’m a graduate of the fellowship in Primary Care Psychology and Medical Education at UMass Chan Medical School. This two year fellowship prepares psychologists to care for patients in primary care and to train physicians and nurses to care for patients in primary care.There are several key aspects of the fellowship that I believe prepared me to be a successful clinician in an academic integrated primary care setting. Working in medical education allows me to have an even broader impact on the lives of our patients and well-being of our communities. During the fellowship, I learned alongside medical trainees while also developing competencies in being a medical educator. Being directly involved in the residents’ training experiences throughout their residency and participating in shared patient care provided me with an increased awareness of the residents’ clinical, well-being, and professional development goals and needs from their perspective. Having a dedicated training experience focused on comprehensive exposure to working on interdisciplinary teams in both outpatient and inpatient settings further provided invaluable opportunities to learn from medical colleagues. I gained a stronger understanding of biopsychosocial factors impacting physical and mental health, and increased knowledge of various health conditions and related treatment, adding to my confidence and competence as a primary care psychologist. UMass Chan Medical School has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to behavioral health integration, and as a behavioral health fellow, I consistently felt valued and supported as an essential part of the team at Barre, an experience that persists now that I am a faculty member there. Applications for the fellowship are open now. 

What else are you working on professionally?

I’m helping rebuild the UMass CIPC’s course in Primary Care Behavioral Health. This course launched in 2007 and has trained thousands of mental health providers in how to practice on primary care teams. The relaunched course is expected to be available in late 2025. I’m especially looking forward to building a module focused on effective communication with team members. This module will help mental health providers understand how to solicit and give information to PCPs about patients they are both caring for. The module will focus on why such communication is particularly important in the primary care environment, related challenges, and specific behavioral strategies to maximize the benefits of effective communication.