Emily Swinkin

Dr. Emily Swinkin is a neurologist specializing in movement disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. She works primarily in the Neuropsychiatry Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health where she focuses on outpatient care of movement disorders and atypical dementia and psychosis in addition to providing general neurology consultations for inpatients at CAMH. She is also cross-appointed to the Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology, and works in the Movement Disorder Clinic at Toronto Western Hospital.

Dr. Swinkin obtained her medical degree from Queen’s University before completing residency in Adult Neurology at the University of Toronto, serving as a chief resident in her final year. She subsequently undertook a two-year fellowship in movement disorders at the Toronto Western Hospital, University of Toronto. Given her interest in medical education, Dr. Swinkin completed the two-year Master Teacher Program through the University of Toronto Department of Medicine during her fellowship training.

As a clinician-teacher, Dr. Swinkin devotes significant time to teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has been involved in teaching medical students since the beginning of residency through CBL and large group sessions and helped create lectures and self-learning modules on movement disorders for the revamped University of Toronto undergraduate neuroscience curriculum which launched in 2017. She was awarded an MD Program Teaching Award of Excellence in 2019. She strongly believes in making neurology accessible to medical students and non-neurology residents and enjoys providing practical teaching sessions to psychiatry, internal medicine, and family medicine residents in addition to more specialized movement disorders teaching for neurology residents.

Dr. Swinkin’s research interests lie in improving end-of-life care for people with neurodegenerative disorders. Specifically, she is involved in exploring how palliative care and philosophies can be integrated into neurological practice and what factors influence the decision to seek medical assistance in dying.

Research Synopsis

-Neuropalliative care: optimizing symptom control and end-of-life care in neurological disease

-Factors impacting the use of medical assistance in dying in patients with neurodegenerative disease

-Drug-related movement disorders

-Neuropsychiatry: specifically the intersection between psychiatric disease and movement disorders, including functional disorders

Recent Publications

1. Swinkin E, Pejman J, Sundaram A. Unilateral papilledema in idiopathic intracranial hypertension: a case series. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences 2021;Apr 23:1-4.

2. Swinkin E, Lizarraga KJ, Algarni M, Dominguez LG, Baarbe JK, Saravanamuttu J, Chen R, Slow E, Lang AE, Wennberg RA. A distinct EEG marker of celiac disease-related cortical myoclonus. Movement Disorders 2021 36;4:999-1005.

3. Keith J, Swinkin E, Gao A, Alminawi S, Zhang M, McGoldrick P, McKeever P, Robertson J, Rogaeva E, Zinman L. Neuropathologic description of CHCHD10 mutated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neurology Genetics 2020;6(1):e394.

Appointments

Honours and Awards

2019-2020 – Parkinson Canada Clinical Movement Disorder Fellowship Grant, Canada

2019 – MD Program Teaching Award of Excellence, University of Toronto, Canada

2017 – Sabiha Al-Hassan Neurology Award for leadership and service, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Canada

2017 – Edmond J. Safra and Michael J. Fox Foundation Travel Grant, USA

2012 – McLaughlin Summer Research Studentship, Queen’s University, Canada