Physician Peer Coach
Dr. Dawn Ellison (Minnesota) is a retired Emergency Medicine physician and has been a Peer Coach with VITAL WorkLife since 2011. Dr. Ellison received her medical degree from the University of Minnesota and completed her Emergency Residency at York Hospital in York, Pennsylvania. She is a Certified Stress Management and Resilience Trainer, Crucial Conversations Instructor, and Certified Professional Coach through the College of Executive Coaching. Dr. Ellison is the President and Founder of Influencing Healthcare (IHC), LLC, an organization dedicated to improving communication in Healthcare with the goal of building collaborative cultures. She is also the co-founder of Healthcare Reinvention Collaborative, an impact network that strives to foster transformative collaboration among healthcare changemakers, empowering them with the connections, resources and support needed to reimagine and create a healthcare system that serves everyone with compassion, equity and care.
Dr. Ellison draws from her 25 plus years of Emergency Medicine experience, leading teams in critical situations and finessing outstanding care for patients in a complex medical climate to help healthcare providers and executives practice and lead thoughtfully, transparently, and deliberately. She spent her 2006-2007 Bush Medical Fellowship learning to build collaborative medical cultures and is particularly skilled in assisting others to communicate in a way that builds relationships, and fosters understanding and trust. She has served as a Crucial Conversations instructor at Mayo Health Systems. As a former medical director herself, she is familiar with the tensions held as a nimble leader.
