Although Lori was not able to attend this Spring’s convocation, she takes a special place in the history of the program as our 30th graduate. Lori is a physical therapist on acute orthopaedics at the Ottawa Hospital – Civic Campus. Her reasons for taking a master’s were to be ready for new opportunities created by the expanding scope of physical therapy practice.

At the grad reception held on Tuesday, May 24, Lori’ s research supervisor Dr. Lesley Bainbridge read the following message sent by Lori who is currently on holidays in Ireland.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few words while I’m out of the country.

From my very first post in my first course, Evaluating Sources of Evidence, to sending off my final revision of my major project, this has been an amazing journey. As with any journey, there have been challenges, both academically and personally. Since the fall of 2007 when I started, deadlines have come and gone, and courses were completed, one by one. I have watched two children graduate from high school and one from college. I have said goodbye to my grandmother, a nephew and my father-in-law, and celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary. In addition to my very patient husband, the one constant throughout the four years has been my laptop. While not occupying half of our dining room table, it has traveled to England, France, and New York City. Now on its last legs, it has been replaced by a much lighter, cooler iPad.

In addition to all that I learned through the course of my degree, I learned a few truths.
1.    Don’t leave submissions until the last minute: the server may be down!
2.    Having tech support in the guise of teenagers is invaluable.
3.    Back everything up-twice! USB sticks do die!
And finally,
4.    What an amazing world we live in, where I can sit in my pajamas in my dining room in Ottawa and discuss common issues with a classmate in Hong Kong!

I would like to thank Lesley Bainbridge for her invaluable support and guidance over the past year while I completed my final project.

Thanks must also go to Sue Stanton who regularly checked in during the final course even when she was south of the equator and to Andrea Walus who answered questions no matter how silly they seemed. Finally, I would like to recognize all the learners and instructors I met, worked with and learned from during this degree.

It has been an amazing four years and I have highly recommended this program to my colleagues. One actually listened to me and began her own journey in the fall of 2010!

Lori’s research entitled Isolation and the Older Adult: Best Practices for Physiotherapy Interventions suggests that physiotherapy intervention should be frequent, aimed at preventing loss of function, and started early within a patient stay to prevent de-conditioning in older adults on isolation in acute care. For the full abstract, visit the program website.

Congratulations Lori – may you seize, as a master of rehabilitation science, the new opportunities that await you.