Rehabilitation

Why I chose this career path: Meet three women graduating from the Faculty of Medicine this fall

lanthierj — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 19:51:55 +0000

Why I chose this career path: Meet three women graduating from the Faculty of Medicine this fall

lanthierj Fri, 11/02/2018 - 15:51

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"I decided to pursue occupational therapy because compassion was evident in the client-centred practice of the profession," says Tsering Wangmo, who is graduating this fall (all photos by Julia Soudat)

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A woman whose chronic pain led her to study occupational therapy. A speech pathologist whose quest for answers prompted her to pursue a PhD in rehabilitation sciences. And a woman drawn to occupational therapy because of its compassion.

Meet three women who are members of the Faculty of Medicine's Class of 2018, graduating this fall. They explain why they chose to enter their fields.

Lauren Stacey: Master of Science in Occupational Therapy

"I became interested in occupational therapy because of my personal experience living with chronic pain. In my second year of undergraduate studies, I was not able to function properly due to pain. I saw a lot of health-care professionals, but no one was able to help me as well as an occupational therapist, who made it possible for me to attend classes, engage in extra-curriculars and advocate for myself at school.

"After this experience, I did some research and learned that occupational therapists can work in such a multitude of areas and capacities that this profession would open many doors for my career. Because of my undergraduate degree in global development, I was also looking for a profession that could blend well with my undergraduate training. As an occupational therapist, I’d be well-suited to engage in advocacy and make meaningful changes in health care, and that attracted me to the field."

Teresa Valenzano: PhD from Rehabilitation Sciences Institute

“As a practising speech-language pathologist, I found myself frequently asking, 'Why?' – looking for answers to clinically relevant questions and often finding the evidence was lacking. As I strived to inform and improve my own clinical practice, I became more and more interested in trying to answer those questions. A doctorate in the rehabilitation sciences provided me with that opportunity, allowing for collaboration between different researchers and health disciplines to tackle a current gap in knowledge.

“I am specifically interested in swallowing physiology in individuals with various neurological disorders, with a focus on understanding how function is impaired as a result of a neurological disorder and how this may relate to perceived quality of life.

“For most individuals, food lies centrally at everything we do – grabbing a coffee with a friend to catch up, hosting a holiday dinner and having cake to celebrate your birthday. It’s not something we think a lot about when we do it, but when the ability to eat safely becomes compromised, it could rock the foundation of most of our social interactions.

“Changes in neurological function can often lead to changes in swallowing safety, but how this changes depends on the type of disorder and the interaction of various different physiological systems and the effect on quality of life is specific to each individual.”

Read more about Teresa Valenzano

Tsering Wangmo: Master of Science in Occupational Therapy

“As a Tibetan Canadian, I was raised to strive for compassion by developing genuine sympathy for the suffering of others and the will to help remove their pain. I decided to pursue occupational therapy because compassion was evident in the client-centred practice of the profession. Occupational therapists engage with clients with the intention of understanding and addressing their individual needs, and it all comes from a place of empathy and the desire to help. I strongly believe that occupational therapists embody the true essence of compassion.”

Read more about Tsering Wangmo

U of T startups win prizes for products helping disabled, injured

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 17 May 2017 19:50:36 +0000

U of T startups win prizes for products helping disabled, injured

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/17/2017 - 15:50

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Emile Maamary and Mark Elias show off Steadiwear's tremor-dampening glove and the startup's latest award (photo by Chris Sorensen)

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Steadiwear produces a tremor reducing glove. MyndTec has an electrical stimulation device to help patients with strokes or spinal cord injuries

Watching an elderly loved one struggle with a disability is never easy. But while most of us simply grimace and soldier on, Mark Elias decided to do something about it.

The co-founder of Steadiwear, a University of Toronto startup, developed a specially designed glove that stabilizes the hands of patients with Parkinson’s disease or essential tremor.

This week, Steadiwear was one of two U of T startups to win competitions at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery conference, an event that seeks to promote the commercialization of innovative ideas in the province. The other startup was MyndTec Systems, which won an accessibility-tech pitch competition with an electrical stimulation system that helps patients with upper-limb paralysis regain movement.

Elias got the idea for Steadiwear after visiting his grandmother in France several years ago.

“I saw her spilling coffee on herself helplessly, and it was very painful for me,” said Elias, who graduated from U of T three years ago with a bachelor’s degree in applied science and civil engineering. “When I returned to Toronto, I made it my personal mission to solve this problem.”

His solution? Elias started by investigating the tuned dampening systems used to make buildings more earthquake resistant. He eventually settled on a ball joint surrounded by a non-Newtonian fluid – not unlike the state-shifting slurry one gets by mixing cornstarch with water. The resulting device, developed with co-founder Emile Maamary at U of T’s Impact Centre accelerator, allows patients to move their hands voluntarily but stiffens up when it encounters the quick, jerky movements associated with tremors.

That's in stark contrast to existing tremor treatments that either rely on powerful drugs, which can have unpleasant side effects, or weighted gloves that impede voluntary movement and cause muscle strain.

On Tuesday, Elias and Maamary won the Ontario Brain Institute’s ONtrepreneurs $20,000 Pitch Challenge – the fourth award Steadiwear has won in the past few months.

Steadiwear's growing pile of hardware shouldn't come as a suprise. Canada's aging population – the number of seniors recently surpassed the number of children in Canada for the first time – means there is ballooning demand for new innovative products to help elderly Canadians live more comfortably with chronic diseases and disabilities.

It also happens to be an area where U of T entrepreneurs and researchers are carving out an area of expertise, building on research done at U of T and partner hospitals.

U of T startups, many of them focused on the accessibilty space, put in a particularly strong showing at the ONtrepreneurs pitch competition. All but one of the five finalists were from the university, which boasts 10 accelerators spread across its three Toronto-area campuses.

The others were: WinterLight Labs, which developed a system to assess dementia based on patients’ speech; iMerciv, which makes a wearable device to assist people with vision loss; and SensOR Medical Laboratories, which devised a force-sensing skin tool to help students and surgical residents improve performance when using minimally invasive surgical techniques.

Professor Milos Popovic (left) and his team give a demonstration of MyndMove, MyndTec Inc.’s first commercial product (Photo: Barry Westhead / Toronto Rehabilitation Institute)

The other big U of T winner at OCE Discovery was MyndTec, co-founded by Milos Popovic, a professor at U of T’s Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering and a senior scientist at Toronto Rehab, and Aleksandar Prodic, a professor at the university’s department of electrical and computer engineering.

MyndTec’s first commercial product, MyndMove, uses a system of coordinated electrodes to stimulate arm muscles and replicate functional upper limb movement in patients who have suffered strokes or spinal cord injuries. Here’s how it works in practice: a physiotherapist will tell a patient to think about executing a movement – making a fist, for example – and MyndTec’s system will stimulate the patient’s arm into action.

“Eventually those will connect and create a new pathway from an uninjured part of the brain,” says Alexa Granger, a quality assurance manager at MyndTec. “If someone’s had a stroke or spinal cord injury, and they now have paralysis or weakness in the arm and hand, they can’t do many things that we take for granted – like bathing ourselves, feeding ourselves, grooming ourselves, getting dressed. With our therapy, we can help them to gain some function back in their arms and hands.”

MyndTec's equipment is already available at clinics in Ontario and B.C.. The company is now preparing to launch into the huge U.S. market.

Reza Moridi, Ontario’s minister of research, innovation and science, congratulated MyndTec and the accessibility competition’s other finalists, which included TranQool – a startup founded by U of T alumni that uses encrypted video to match users with cognitive behavioural therapists.

“These talented innovators are making a real difference for people with disabilities, and for Ontario,” Moridi said.

Learn more about Entrepreneurship at U of T

Rehabilitating veterans: U of T’s ongoing commitment

ullahnor — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:48:33 +0000

Rehabilitating veterans: U of T’s ongoing commitment

ullahnor Fri, 11/11/2016 - 09:48

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An injured soldier receiving therapy. In 1918, a ward aides program was designed run by the engineering department to instruct volunteers in providing retraining for war veterans (photo courtesy of U of T archives)

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When the wounded warriors of the First World War returned home, Canada’s veterans could count on the University of Toronto to support their rehabilitation.

It was from the ravages of the First World War that U of T’s rehabilitation programs emerged, and that commitment has been sustained over the decades to the present day, as students, faculty and alumni work to improve the quality of life for those injured in war zones.

During the First World War, a six-month training program for physical therapists was established in 1917 at Hart House by the Military Hospitals Commission. Known as the “Hart House Course,” it emphasized massage and electrotherapy, gymnastics and muscle function training.

Read about U of T's Soldiers' Tower war memorial and museum

By 1919, 250 people had completed the program and were assigned to military hospitals across Canada.

U of T also laid the foundation for occupational therapy during this period through the training of Ward Aides. The program was established under the auspices of the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Engineering, supported by professors and instructors in the Faculty of Medicine. The aim was to provide vocational retraining to veterans so they could enter or re-enter the workforce.

In 1917, the Miltary Hospitals Commission established a six-month course at Hart House to train physiotherapists for the rehabilitation of injured soldiers (photo courtesy of U of T archives)

While the urgency waned when the armistice was signed in 1919, the importance of rehabilitation had been firmly established. In 1926, U of T set up a two-year program in occupational therapy, while the first formal diploma in physical therapy was established in 1931 at a time when 27 per cent of Ontario hospitals had departments in the field. The importance of psychiatric care to support veterans became better known as the 1930s began and by 1934, new training was included in the occupational therapy program to address this pressing need.

Flash forward to the present day, where students like Melissa Biscardi continue to work alongside veterans. Biscardi is completing her master's degree under the supervision of Professor Angela Colantonio in the Faculty of Medicine's Rehabilitation Sciences Institute. Her clinical work experience with veterans inspired Biscardi’s current thesis research, which is looking at traumatic brain injuries in military women, both those currently serving and veterans.

“I would often have patients come into our clinic complaining about back or neck pain, but I could quickly see there was other underlying issues like mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder,” explained Biscardi.

With a background in nursing and a strong interest in research that was ignited during her undergraduate studies, Biscardi decided to pursue a graduate degree.

“I knew that I wanted to find a way to help members of the military and veterans – they’ve given so much to serve our nation – plus I was interested in the intersection between traumatic injury, mental health and gender. So this has proven to be the perfect match,” she said. Biscardi also noted this will help advance research on traumatic brain injury in female veterans, which has not been well explored.

Danny Slack spent five weeks interning at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre as he pursued his master's degree in physical therapy. Slack, who completed his degree last year, recalled working with a 97-year-old man who had outlived his wife and even his children.

“I couldn’t believe how much he wanted to exercise,” said Slack. “We’d do 10 minutes on a reclining bike and he wanted to keep going. He said he wanted to be the oldest man in there.”

Today, U of T’s rehabilitation sciences comprise the departments of occupational science and occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech-language pathology and the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute.

In addition to offering professional master’s programs in core rehab disciplines, the sector also supports research-based graduate degrees. It has the most extensive network of clinical facilities available in North America, as well as faculty who are known nationally and internationally. Now these programs seek not only to improve the quality of life for veterans, but for clients across Canada and around the world.

Professor Edward Shorter and Heidi Singer also contributed to this story.

Rehabilitation

Why I chose this career path: Meet three women graduating from the Faculty of Medicine this fall

Lauren Stacey: Master of Science in Occupational Therapy

Read more about Lauren Stacey

Teresa Valenzano: PhD from Rehabilitation Sciences Institute

Tsering Wangmo: Master of Science in Occupational Therapy

U of T startups win prizes for products helping disabled, injured

Learn more about Entrepreneurship at U of T

Rehabilitating veterans: U of T’s ongoing commitment

Read about U of T's Soldiers' Tower war memorial and museum