Meet the Team
-
![]()
Dr. John Chong
MD, BASc, MSc, DOHS, FRCPC, FACPM, ABIME, MDPAC(C), ARCT
From his roots in Oakville Ontario Canada, piano lessons began at age 3 advancing to the Royal Conservatory in Toronto with Clifford Poole on scholarship. After an injury to his right hand from over practicing the Wanderer Fantasy when he was 14, he went on to study electronic music and composition with Samuel Dolin. He did perform at Massey Hall and completed the ARCT in Piano Performance at age 17. His prize-winning composition Continuum was performed by the Toronto Symphony the same year. With the intention of a career in electronic music he went on to graduate in electrical engineering at the University of Toronto while working as a summer student at the National Research Council in the Electronic Music Laboratory with Hugh LeCaine in Ottawa.
As the Medical Director of the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada, Dr. John Chong has treated musicians with repetitive strain injuries, motor control problems, anxiety, depression, neuropathic pain, nerve entrapments, and stress-related disorders since 1986. He develops, implements, and evaluates complementary, alternative, and integrative health strategies for improving health and well-being through interdisciplinary and intersectoral partnerships through the Performing Arts Medicine Association in Canada and internationally. His clinical and research interest is regulation of the autonomic nervous system using neurobiofeedback techniques to treat performance traumatic stress disorders. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation is ongoing to assess the impact of cannabis-based medicines as a complementary and alternative treatment.
He has taught Performance Awareness at the Glenn Gould School Performance and Artist Diploma Programs at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. He is a medical consultant for the National Youth Orchestra of Canada and has received the Governor General Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. He has been a guest lecturer at the Universities of Toronto, Ottawa, Wilfred Laurier, McMaster, Western, South Florida, Texas A&M, Chapman, Weill Cornell, Santiago Chile, Galway Ireland, Sydney Australia, Havana Cuba, Taipei Taiwan, and Tokyo Japan.
He was the Co-Chair of the PAMA Annual Symposium in Aspen/Snowmass in 2006/2009, the PAMA Toronto Regional Meetings 2010-2017 and planned the First International PAMA Symposium in New York City in July 2016. He was a founding member and is the Treasurer (2016-present) and Past President of the Performing Arts Medicine Association. He has led a Task Force of PAMA experts to create a series of State-of-the-Art Reviews in Psychological Health at the request of the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) completed in 2017.
He is an avid golfer, hockey player, and pianist in the Cottrell Chong Doc Duo and DragOn Chamber Music Society.
-
![]()
Dr. Kat Cottrell
MD, CCFP, BSc, GDCE, DipABRSM
Dr. Kat Cottrell has been practising at the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada since 2022. Growing up she attended the Royal Northern College of Music as a pianist, flautist, and percussionist, and performed as a soloist, choir accompanist, and in ensembles across Wales and the UK. She studied medicine at Imperial College London for its proximity to the Royal College of Music and Royal Albert Hall, and graduated with a Medical Degree and a Bachelor of Medical Science and Gastroenterology. Whilst working in North West London in the UK she completed her Graduate Diploma in Clinical Epidemiology through McMaster University in 2019. Once in Canada, she completed McMaster’s Contemporary Medical Acupuncture course in 2021.
During her Family Medicine residency at McMaster University, Dr. Kat Cottrell was awarded the CFPC Family Medicine Resident Award for Scholarly Achievement, the Most Outstanding Family Medicine Resident Award, the Ennis Endowment Fund for Pain Management, and the Resident Wellness Champion Award. She also completed research on the impact of medical cannabis on recovery from playing-related musculoskeletal disorders in musicians, winning the Alice G. Brandfonbrener Young Investigator Award from the Performing Arts Medicine Association (PAMA). In addition, following residency she completed a Fellowship in Research and Scholarship at McMaster University.
Dr. Kat Cottrell has been a Board Member of PAMA and Chair of the Education Committee since 2022, leading PAMA’s webinar series on the health of performing artists. For her contributions to PAMA, she received the inaugural President’s Award of Excellence in July 2023. She organized the inaugural PAMAthon, a 24hr virtual global gathering for the performing arts medicine community, in September 2023 with over 730 registrants from 53 countries. She is an Assistant Clinical Professor (Adjunct) in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University where she is involved in teaching residents.
In 2021 she completed the Medical Psychotherapy Association of Canada’s Psychotherapy Training Program. She has a special interest in trauma informed care and has presented on the topic at Family Medicine Forum, OCFP’s Family Medicine Summit and her research on Adverse Childhood Experiences in musicians at PAMA’s virtual symposium in 2020. She also has a special interest in lifestyle modifications for optimizing the health of performing artists and is completing research into the primary care needs of musicians. She provides gender affirming care as well as primary care and psychotherapy for the 2SLGBTQ+ community. She has completed multiple courses through Rainbow Health Ontario to further her skills in this area. As well as working at the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada, she works as a full scope family physician in Student Health at the University of Guelph.
Dr. Kat Cottrell continues to pursue her love of music through the Cottrell Chong Doc Duo, having attended Orford Festival to receive tuition from Anderson and Roe, as well as teaching her amazing piano students. Away from music, she is a mean hockey defence woman, avid vegetable gardener and a surf fanatic.
-
![]()
Dr. John McMillan
MD, CCFP, MMus, BSc, BMus
Dr. John McMillan has been practicing at Musicians’ Clinics of Canada since 2011. In his life before medicine he pursued music in various capacities, which included classical piano, jazz alto sax, various pick-up bands on keyboards, and choir director. His main focus was piano performance, in which he completed Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, both at UBC. He also spent some time at the Royal Conservatory of Music Professional School (now known as the Glenn Gould School), and at the Banff Centre. Before medical school and residency at Queen’s University, he fit in a Bachelor of Science at the University of Guelph. In addition to his duties at the clinic he is also part of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada’s summer training camp faculty.
-
![]()
Dr. Marshall Chasin
AuD, M.Sc., Reg. CASLPO, Doctor of Audiology
Dr. Marshall Chasin is an audiologist and the Director of Auditory Research at the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada, Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto (in Linguistics), Associate Professor in the School of Communication Disorders and Sciences at the Western University. He is the author of over 200 articles and 8 books including Musicians and the Prevention of Hearing Loss, and just recently, Music and Hearing Aids. He has written columns in Hearing Review called Back to Basics and a blog at www.HearingHealthMatters.org/HearTheMusic. Dr. Chasin has been the recipient of many awards over the years including the 2012 Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Award for service to Canada. Dr. Marshall Chasin received the Canada 150 Medal in 2017. He has developed a new TTS app called Temporary Hearing Loss Test app.
The Musicians’ Clinics of Canada began in 1985 at the request of the Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians after completing a needs assessment amongst their membership. The pilot clinic was set up within the McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences with minimal resources and the results were published in the Canadian Family Physician and Medical Problems of Performing Artists. In 1990 the project expanded to become the Centre for Human Performance and Health Promotion, a multidisciplinary clinic including specialists from public health and preventive medicine, physical medicine and rehabilitation, orthopedic surgery, psychiatry, and allied health care professionals including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, kinesiology, audiology, athletic training, social work, massage therapy, acupuncture, shiatsu, Feldenkrais, Laban/Bartenieff, Tai Chi and Qi Gong. This was the clinical laboratory from which an integrative approach to patient care was created allowing the performing artist patient to experience a broad range of interventions funded by the publicly funded health care system in Ontario.
Unfortunately, with drastic cuts to healthcare funding by the provincial government of the time, the Centre scaled back operations in 1996 to two boutique clinics based in Hamilton and Toronto, maintaining publicly funded consultations, a Performance Exposure Therapy Program, medical psychotherapy, and audiology. Trauma-informed care approaches allow for the treatment of complex playing related musculoskeletal disorders (PRMD) including performance stress-related disorders of motor control or focal dystonia (FD).
Surface electromyography and motion analysis (Noraxon), heart rate variability (Heart Math), and neurobiofeedback (Thought Technology) was blended into the therapeutic frame to create a portable Artists’ Psychophysiology and Ergonomics Lab (APELab) which is the technology used to formulate the integrative conceptualization and treatment interventions in the Performance Exposure Therapy Program (PET). This technology is also critical in the evaluation of clinical target outcomes in the psychophysiological approach to treatment as described in the recently published book chapter in the textbook Performing Arts Medicine in 2018. Numerous lecture/workshops have been presented internationally and in Canada utilizing the APELab to demonstrate key components of performance stress of the musician and the relationship to adverse injury health outcomes and sub-optimal musical performance.
With the legalization of cannabis for medical and recreational uses in Canada in 2018, the Cannabis Health Integrative Medicine Prevention Program (CHIMP) was created to assess, prescribe, and evaluate cannabis-based medicines provided to patients in the Musicians’ Clinics of Canada. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluation is ongoing to assess the impact of medical cannabis preparations as a complementary and alternative treatment for playing-related musculoskeletal disorder, anxiety, depression, nerve entrapments and various stress-related disorders including focal dystonia. “Medical Cannabis in Performing Artist-Centric Care” was presented at the Performing Arts Medicine Association International Symposium at UCLA in 2019.
Patient clinical progress is measured by the Musculoskeletal Pain Intensity and Interference Questionnaire for Musicians (MPIIQM), the Depression, Anxiety and Stress -21 Scale (DASS-21) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI).
