Speaker Profile
Patricia A. Parker

Patricia A. Parker PhD

Clinical Psychology
New York, New York, United States of America

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Patricia A. Parker, Ph.D. is an associate member and associate attending psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is also the Director of the Communication Skills Training and Research Program. In this role, she leads a behavioral science team to provide training to clinicians to enhance their interaction with their patients and research that evaluates novel communication skills interventions and outcomes.

Her research primarily focuses on healthcare provider-patient communication and decision making and quality of life among different cancer patient populations. She has conducted several studies examining aspects of physician-patient communication including how patients are told the news of their diagnosis and the impact of the physician-patient encounter on patients’ psychosocial adjustment.

She has received peer-reviewed funding from NIH and other sources including a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) project to examine clinical and psychosocial outcomes of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, an NIH-funded R21 to examine decision making about contralateral prophylactic mastectomy in women with unilateral sporadic breast cancer, and an NCI-funded career development award (K07) and R03 that examined physician-patient communication and psychosocial adjustment of individuals with metastatic cancer of unknown primary site (CUP). She has 59 peer-reviewed publications that focus on aspects of communication and quality of life in cancer patients and survivors.

Dr. Parker received her Ph.D. from the San Diego State University/the University of California, San Diego Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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