Michael R. Privitera, M.S., M.D.

Dr. Privitera is not accepting ongoing private patients. He continues to provide two visit consultation in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Consultation Clinic, and the Outpatient Psychiatry Consultation Clinic. Consultation can be obtained by calling 275-3505.

Professional Background

Dr. Privitera is Professor of Psychiatry at University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), a consultation/liaison psychiatrist and directs the outpatient division of the Psychiatric Consultation/Liaison Service. This is a two visit consultative model to be a support to primary care clinicians, and second opinions on treatment resistant mood disorders to other psychiatrists.
He is a member of the UR Medicine Workplace Safety Committee, Staff Support Committee, Patient and Family Centered Care Council addressing disruptive behavior, patient satisfaction and Burnout in physicians. He Co-Chaired Workplace Violence Committee in Psychiatry for 6 years with Catherine Cerulli PhD JD and assembled national and international experts in the workplace violence field which culminated in editing and writing for the book: Workplace Violence in Mental and General Healthcare Settings (Jones and Bartlett Publishers 2011). This book won the 2012 Manford Guttmacher Award, given by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (AAPL), a forensic psychiatry division of The American Psychiatric Association.
In recent years, Dr. Privitera has been focusing on the issue of physician burnout. He is one of the main architects of URMC's hospital-wide multimodal approach to addressing clinician burnout by supporting individuals and making institutional/ organizational changes in his hospital role as Medical Director of the Medical Faculty and Clinician Wellness Program. He is a member of a national collaborative group of academic medical centers referred to as "CHARM" (Collaborative for Healing and Renewal in Medicine) centered at MGH/Harvard. He is a member of the Federation of State Medical Boards Task Force on Physician Burnout and was Chair of the Medical Society of the State of New York Committee on Physician Wellbeing and Resilience from 2015-2019.
He has written in publications of The Joint Commission, American Hospital Association, National Patient Safety Foundation, Medscape and Journal of Hospital Administration on physician burnout.