Professor Deborah Cook

Professor Cook graduated from McMaster Medical School (1985) and Internal Medicine Residency (1988). She completed General Internal Medicine Fellowship (1989) and the MSc (Design, Measurement and Evaluation Program) at McMaster. She then did a Critical Care Fellowship at Stanford University (1991).

Dr Cook practices intensive care medicine at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. At McMaster University, she is Co-Chair of the Evidence-Based Practice Center. As Academic Chair of Critical Care Medicine at St Joseph's Healthcare and McMaster University, she has trained many residents and mentored many junior faculty on how to conduct, publish and appraise clinical research.

Dr Cook is interested in risk factors for critical illness, prevention of ICU-acquired illness and complications, life support technology, ethics, and end-of-life choices for critically ill patients. Her research interests are in the design and conduct of multicenter studies, minimizing bias in systematic reviews of the literature, incorporation of diverse kinds of evidence into practice, and end of life decision-making.

As a Canada Research Chair of Research Transfer in Intensive Care, and former Chair of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group, Dr. Cook has published over 600 peer-review articles and supervised many young trainees and successful faculty. She has received numerous local, national and international awards for her practice, teaching, mentoring and research. In 2016, Dr. Cook was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for her global contributions to improving the care of critically ill patients.