James Downar

MDCM, MHSc, FRCPC

Investigator

Head and Professor, Division of Palliative Care

Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa
Clinical Research Chair in Palliative and End of Life Care

Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa
Adjunct Professor

Queensland University of Technology School of Law
Staff Physician

Department of Critical Care, The Ottawa Hospital
Co-Chair

Pan-Canadian Palliative Care Research Collaborative

About:

Dr. James Downar is a Critical Care and Palliative Care physician in Ottawa. He graduated from McGill Medical School and completed residency training in Internal Medicine, Critical Care and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto. He has a Master’s degree in Bioethics from the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. He is Professor and Head of the Division of Palliative Care at the University of Ottawa, where he holds a Clinical Research Chair in Palliative and End of Life Care. He is an adjunct professor at the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at the Queensland University of Technology.

He is the co-chair of the Pan-Canadian Palliative Care Research Collaborative and the Secretary of the Canadian Critical Care Society. He has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, has been principal investigator on more than 25 peer-reviewed grants. In 2021 he received the Award of Excellence from the Ontario Medical Association’s Section on Palliative Medicine.

Research Interests:

Communication, decision-making and suffering in seriously ill patients; bereavement and complicated grief; palliative care for the critically ill and for non-cancer illness.

Select Publications:

Downar J, Parsons HA, Cohen L, Besserer E, Adeli S, Gratton V, Murphy R, Warmels G, Bruni A, Bhimji K, Dyason C, Enright P, Desjardins I, Wooller K, Kabir M, Noel C, Heidinger B, Anderson K, Arsenault-Mehta K, Lapenskie J, Webber C, Bedard D, Iyengar A, Bush SH, Isenberg SR, Tanuseputro P, Vanderspank-Wright B, Lawlor P. (2022). Bereavement outcomes in family members of those who died in acute care hospitals before and during the first wave of COVID-19: A cohort study. Palliative Medicine.

Sanders JJ, Manson L, Constien D, Downar J. (2022). Discussing prognosis and what matters most for people with serious illness. BMJ.

Wegier P, Kurahashi A, Saunders S, Lokuge B, Steinberg L, Myers J, Koo E, van Walraven C, Downar J. (2021). mHOMR: a prospective observational study of an automated mortality prediction model to identify patients with unmet palliative needs. BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care.

Downar J, Delaney JW, Hawryluck L, Kenny L. (2016). Guidelines for the withdrawal of life-sustaining measures. Intensive Care Medicine.

Downar J, Goldman R, Pinto R, Englesakis M, Adhikari NK. (2017). The "surprise question" for predicting death in seriously ill patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis. CMAJ.

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