About me

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Ian F. Bradley Ph.D. ABPP – Professional Bio

 

Psychologist-in-Chief

  • Royal Victoria Hospital, 1981-2008

Assistant Professor

  • Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at McGill, 1980-present

Medical Scientist

  • McGill University, 1980-present

Sports Consultant

  • Expos Baseball team, 2003-2004 seasons
  • NHL Players’ Association, 2002-present

Member of Professional Management Associations

  • Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, SIOP
  • Society of Psychologists in Management, SPIM

Member of Professional Clinical Associations

  • Canadian and American Psychological Associations
  • Ordre des Psychologues du Québec

Member of Scientific Association

  • Sigma Xi Scientific Society

 

What’s my background?

 

For the past twenty-five years, I have been the Psychologist-in-Chief of the Department of Psychology at the Royal Victoria Hospital, a partner hospital of the McGill University Health Center in Montreal. As department director, leading a team that sometimes numbered over thirty psychologists, I performed all the traditional administrative tasks – managing budgets, training staff, writing policy manuals, etc.

However, the fun thing was developing new programs. To do this, we took current research findings and applied them to solve practical problems that our patients brought us. To name a few, we developed programs in the following areas:

  •       Stress Management
  •       Insomnia
  •       Work burnout
  •       Depression

For most of my professional life, I have combined these two roles – therapist and manager. There’s no doubt which one was tougher – it’s managing people. Most patients – even those with bizarre issues – were invariably polite and grateful for the help I provide. If I didn’t cure them, they seemed appreciative of the fact that I listened.

Managing a professional staff is entirely another thing. Blending personal agendas with a common goal, using moral suasion to entice people into areas of responsibility not of their liking are only some of the infinitely more difficult tasks of the administrator. From it all, I learned to appreciate the psychology of the workplace and refine my skills as an executive coach.

In addition to running a hospital psychology department, I am also a teacher. I have taught the final year undergraduate course in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for over twenty five years at McGill. It was fun to turn-on young people to CBT and its applications especially in solving workplace problems.

I also taught the graduate seminar in Adult Assessment in which I stressed the variety of measurement instruments – surveys, interviews, event recordings – that are available to characterize stress and other problems.

My executive coaching practice has benefited from memberships in such international associations as the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychologists (SIOP) as well as the Society of Psychologists in Management (SPIM).

I have also worked in a very special work environment – the hi-stress world of the professional athlete where reactions to mistakes and disappoints can make or break careers. My work as a psychologist in Montreal involved providing mental health consultation for the Expos in their last two seasons in the city, and more continuously, for the NHL Players’ Association.

 

What does all this experience bring? When someone talks to me about a work problem, I am capable of understanding and together with the client able to develop an effective action plan to overcome the difficulty.