Kathleen McChesney is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist at the UC Health Burn and Frostbite Center; and Senior Instructor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado. She serves as a Consultant-Liaison for the Department of Psychiatry and treats complex medical and psychiatric cases in both the Intensive Care Unit and outpatient settings. As faculty, she teaches interdisciplinary medical colleagues, students, residents, and fellows on specialty topics associated with trauma and psychiatric disorders, acute and chronic pain management, substance use disorders and wellness.  She has over 20 years of clinical experience working with active duty, veteran, and civilian populations in the areas of health, trauma, and pain. She has both domestic and international experience in healthcare education, policy development, and training of fellow healthcare providers. In addition to her clinical and teaching duties, she serves on a working group of the American Burn Association to establish standards of psychological care for burn and frostbite survivors.  

As a former director of the Pain Behavioral Health Clinic at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, she specialized in the treatment of service members, retirees, and their dependents with polytrauma, illness, injury, disease and chronic pain. She co-developed the US Navy's first Functional Restoration Pain Program for active duty service members, and served as adjunct faculty for the USUHS in offering education to medical and dental students, residents and fellows on the complexities of managing pain, psychological, and behavioral health. She has contributed to a number of publications in the field of pain psychology, routinely consults with healthcare providers in multidisciplinary settings on complex patient cases, and has been awarded the designation of Associate Master Clinician in 2019.