BUILDING BRIDGES that CREATE EMPOWERING and TRUSTING RELATIONSHIPS
Dr. George Thompson builds compassionate, trustworthy relationships between:
Physicians and patients
Therapists and clients
Parents and children
Dr. Thompson is a child psychiatrist specializing in residential treatment of traumatized youth and in polyvagal-informed crisis response. In addition to training individuals to cultivate compassionate, trustworthy relationships, he assists healthcare organizations to build emotionally safe, curious, coherent, and collaborative cultures.
Dr. Thompson is the Medical Director of crisis services for an innovative youth and adult psychiatric urgent care center in Kansas City and for two psychiatric residential programs in Kansas. As a certified DDP therapist, Dr. George clarifies parenting strategies that nurture a child’s heart-felt knowledge that their lives matter to their families, community, and future generations, regardless of what challenges life has presented them with so far. He is neuroscience lead for the SonderWorx team, which, for example, trains community responders in Albuquerque’s Department of Community Safety. He is a core faculty member for the Polyvagal Institute and serves on their advisory board.
Dr. Thompson has been the Director of Training in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and currently works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine where he teaches future physicians the skills and importance of competent, compassionate doctor-patient communication.
Dr. Thompson has also conducted research in medical education, focusing on how medical professionalism is modeled and learned, and how the climate of professionalism at a medical school promotes or detracts from learning professionalism. His research has won awards and has been published in Academic Medicine.
For 24 years, he has taught and practiced the exercises of the Avatar® Course, authored by Harry Palmer, which increase a person’s internal locus of control with regard to their beliefs and schemas, their attention and will, and their ability to compassionately serve others.