Meet Dr. Amster

Michael Amster, MD, QME
Founder, Integrity Med Legal

Dr. Michael Amster has been a Qualified Medical Evaluator since 2007. He brings a rare combination of deep clinical expertise, medical-legal experience, integrity, empathy and warmth, and a passion for advancing human well-being. He divides his professional time between medical-legal evaluations, clinical practice, and groundbreaking research on positive emotions and their impact on health.

Board-certified in Family Medicine and Pain Management, Dr. Amster earned his medical degree from UC Irvine in 2001, completed his family medicine residency at UC Davis, and pursued an anesthesia-based pain management fellowship at the University of Iowa. Dr. Amster spent the first 15 years of his practice at NorthBay Healthcare in Solano County, where he founded and directed the Pain Management Department, expanding it to a five-provider practice. He relocated to Santa Cruz in 2020, and is a part-time pain management specialist at Santa Cruz Community Health.

A respected leader in the California workers’ compensation community, Dr. Amster has served on the Board of the California Society of Industrial Medicine & Surgery (CSIMS) since 2018, including as Vice President from 2020–2022. He currently leads CSIMS’ monthly education webinar series and frequently presents at conferences and regional meetings on topics such as causation, apportionment, impairment rating, and complex medical issues. He is also the creator of the Amplification ADLs Questionnaire, designed to specifically help evaluators obtain the most accurate information for Kite/Vigil analyses.

Beyond his medical-legal and clinical work, Dr. Amster is a positive emotions researcher with the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center and UC Davis. He has served as a principal investigator on clinical studies demonstrating how the emotion of awe can reduce depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and loneliness, and promote well-being. Two of his research studies have been published in Nature’s Scientific Reports.  He is the co-author of the bestselling book The Power of Awe (Hachette 2023) and leads wellness retreats worldwide with his wife Aylana, a retired prosurfer and yoga teacher. In his free time, Dr. Amster enjoys camper van adventures with his family, surfing at exotic destinations, and playing the ukulele.