Meet The Team

Dr. Douglas Suffield, DACM, Dipl.OM, L.Ac, was born in Toronto, Canada as a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. He lived in Oakville, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; Burlington, Vermont and Marblehead, Massachusetts before he moved to Florida to attend high school at IMG Academies (formerly David Leadbetter Golf Academy). Dr. Suffield went on to attend Florida State University and graduated with a triple major; Political Science, Anthropology, and History. After graduation, Dr. Suffield returned to Canada and became involved in mineral exploration in British Columbia, Alaska, and the Yukon Territory. While in Canada, he gained certification in Industrial Safety and eventually became an Emergency Medical Responder in Calgary, Alberta where he worked in the remote oil fields of Northern Canada.

After several years in the oil fields, Dr. Suffield decided to pursue a career in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, believing that Eastern Medicine coupled with Western Medicine could greatly benefit patients living with chronic pain. Dr. Suffield began his Master’s studies in Gainesville, Florida but desired a more challenging experience so he transferred to AOMA Graduate School of Integrative Medicine in Austin, Texas. While at AOMA he was an enthusiastic student in the school's clinics and was chosen in his senior year to participate in a six-month internship at the Central Texas Veteran's Affairs Hospital. Dr. Suffield has gone on to gain his National Board Certification in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and is fully licensed and accredited by the NCCAOM as a Diplomat of Oriental Medicine. Dr. Suffield has completed his Doctorate of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine (DACM) from Pacific College of Health and Science, San Diego California; with a focus in evidence-informed practice, healthcare systems, and integrative medicine. 

Most recently Dr. Suffield joined the University of Florida- Jacksonville and acted as the project director and pain and opioid stewardship educator and coach for a grant funded pilot program supporting non-opioid and non-pharmacologic pain management in the ED, hospital and outpatient settings. This program was the first of its kind and was supported by funding from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Department of Health (DOH). The main goal of the program was to provide patients with pain education and coaching on integrative and alternative options with a focus on raising patient empowerment, efficacy, and safety. Dr. Suffield was the nation’s first pain coach/ educator in the Emergency Department setting and went on to expand the program into multiple departments at UF Jacksonville. Dr. Suffield is also the Acupuncture Physician for the UF Health Jacksonville Leon L. Haley Jr., MD Brain Wellness Program and is responsible for providing Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) modalities to Veterans and first responders who have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the field of duty. Dr. Suffield’s areas of expertise are pain and stress management, Pain Neuroscience Education (PNE), Chinese herbal therapy, Korean hand therapy (KHT), body work (cupping, gua sha, Qi-gong), and mindfulness meditational/meta-cognition. 

“While we may not understand what it is like to be anyone other than ourselves, or to live the lives or experiences others have, we all feel pain, stress, and some form of suffering at one time or another. In other words, pain, stress, and suffering are intrinsic to human life, which means that although these experiences on the surface seem isolating and alienating, they can in fact serve as a bridge to build humanity, compassion, and understanding. In other words, pain, stress, and suffering are things we all go through alone... together.”