Dr. Donald Emile Addington
Positions
Clinical Professor
Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry
Full Member
Hotchkiss Brain Institute
Full Member
Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education
Contact information
Web presence
Phone number
Office: +1 (403) 944-4548
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Background
Educational Background
MBBS Medicine, University of London , 1972
MRCPsych Psychiatry, Royal College of Psychiatrists , 1976
FRCPC Psychiatry, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, 1982
Biography
Dr. Donald Addington is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, a member of the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education and the Hotchkiss Brain Institute. He is active in research, education, clinical practice administration and advocacy. His research activities focus on access quality and outcome of mental health services with a focus on schizophrenia and early psychosis intervention,
Dr. Addington has over 150 peer reviewed publications and has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. He established the psychosis research group at the University of Calgary in 1986, a group that continues to the present time and is now a component of the Mathison Centre.
Dr. Addington has developed several tools that have had a broad impact on the quality of health care delivery. These include clinical practice guidelines, psychiatric status rating scales, fidelity scales, risk adjustment models and performance measures. In 1990 he published the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia which has become the internationally recognized gold standard for the assessment of depression in schizophrenia and has been translated into over 40 languages.
In Canada, Dr. Addington has chaired 3 working groups for the development of the Canadian Clinical Practice Guidelines for Schizophrenia published in 1997, 2005 and 2017.
In 2016 he published the First Episode Psychosis Fidelity Scale (FEPS-FS) . This is a reliable and valid a tool that assesses access and quality of first episode psychosis services. He has used this measure in large scale projects, in Ontario Canada, across the United States, Czechia and Italy. In 2021, the University of Calgary Press published an open access version the FEPS-FS 1.0 version of the scale and manual. In 2024 Dr. Addington will publish a peer reviewed version of the FEPS-FS 1.1 along side a new fidelity scale to assess team based care for individuals at Clinical High Risk for Psychosis, the Clinical High Risk for Psychosis Services Fidelity Scale (CHRP-FS).
In education, he was an author on a Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons document Core mental health competencies for Physicians. The college uses this document as the platform to support the development of core mental health competencies for Royal College specialties other than psychiatry. He provides Continuing Professional Development to psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians. He is also a clinician who works in an early psychosis program.
In addition to his research career Dr. Addington was for 11 years the Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Calgary and Head Calgary Health Region Regional Clinical Department of Psychiatry. He then served two three year terms as the Board Chair of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. He has served on several committees for the Canadian Institutes for Health Information, the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the International Early Psychosis Association
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Research
Areas of Research
Dr. Addington has a Web of Science h index of 55, Average Citations per article 61.83 Sum of Citations 11,129. Citing articles 8518.
Dr. Addington’s research has spanned and linked clinical and health services research in a way that supports clinical practice, policy and funding. He has developed a number of tools that have had a broad impact on the quality of health care delivery, particularly in the area of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. These include clinical practice guidelines, psychiatric status rating scales, fidelity scales, risk adjustment models and performance measures. In 1990 he published the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia, which has become the internationally recognized gold standard for the assessment of depression in schizophrenia and has been translated into over 40 language versions. In 2008 he started on the development of sets of performance measures that use scales to assess access, quality and outcome of mental health services. This has resulted in one combined set of quality indicators and one outcome set. In 2016 he published the First Episode Psychosis Fidelity Services Scale (FEPS-FS) a set of performance measures which assess the accessibility and quality of first episode psychosis services. The tool has been revised, updated and published by the University of Calgary Press in 2021 https://press.ucalgary.ca/books/9781773852089/ . The scale uses a five point Likert scale to rate components. This measurement method supports the development of standards which allows individual programs to compare themselves to published standards. It can also be used by service delivery organizations and funders to set standards. The fidelity scale is being used for quality improvement and evaluation in a number of Canadian Provinces and US States. It has also been used in specific research projects as well as in 3 large scale projects. A US Government funded implementation study across 32 states, a Canadian study in the Early Psychosis Intervention Ontario Network of 40 programs. The third was a national study of Early Psychosis Intervention Programs in Italy.
He led the team that developed the International Consortium for Health Outcome Measurement (ICHOM) Psychotic Disorders standard set of Patient Reported Outcome Measures https://connect.ichom.org/standard-sets/psychotic-disorders/. This outcome set with risk adjustment factors, supports both measurement based care and comparison of outcomes across programs, health systems and internationally.
Professor Addington’s current and future research is focussed on three areas:
- Broadening the application of the First Episode Psychosis Services Fidelity Scale
- Development of a linked set of early psychosis intervention services fidelity scales, that cover a broader range of clinical services such as those for patients at Clinical High Risk of developing Psychosis and Bipolar Disorder.
- Testing and application of patient reported outcome measures and measure sets.
Participation in university strategic initiatives
Awards
- award, 2013
- award, 2011
- award, 2009
- Foundation of the Canadian Psychiatric Association Leadership Award, 2005
- Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology Gold Medal for 2004, 2004
- Twenty Year Long Service Award Calgary Health Region, 2004
- award, 1990
Publications
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