uOttawa Graduate Studies— Outstanding bilingual research opportunities in the Faculty of Health Sciences
It’s frightening to think how many things we take for granted in our daily lives until we can’t do them any more. If we take a fall, or suffer some other trauma such as a stroke, or simply can’t taste our food anymore because we’ve gotten old, we all hope there might be a quick recovery or some decent improvement in our quality of life situation.
Thankfully, uOttawa’s goal-oriented graduate studies programs in Health Sciences offer the community real benefit through cutting-edge research into mitigating many of the adversities that affect our health. Postdoctoral fellow Katrine Sauvé-Schenk, a registered occupational therapist, has witnessed first-hand the struggles people face when trying to return to their normal daily activities following a debilitating event. In her 2018 uOttawa PhD thesis in rehabilitation sciences, SauvéSchenk revealed how tough it can be for people in a low-income francophone demographic to access the services they need to return to meaningful activities following a stroke. It’s as if the deck was stacked against them.
“The biggest finding for me was the significant influence of the structures of the health and social service system itself — the policies, the regulations and the services that we have — on peoplewith low income,” Sauvé-Schenk said.
PhD supervisors Mary Egan and Claire-Jehanne Dubouloz-Wilner prepared Sauvé-Schenk well for the postdoctoral research she now conducts with the Montfort Research Chair in Organization of Health Services at the Institut du Savoir Montfort. The ISM is a unique collaborative research facility that is dedicated to improving health care, particularly within francophone communities, and is a great platform for Sauvé-Schenk to put her thesis findings to work at reducing the inequities in social determinants of health.
The Faculty of Health Sciences at uOttawa excels at matching the academic goals of its graduate students to outstanding research opportunities that can bring about real change in health care. At the Faculty’s School of Nursing, masters student Danielle ChoYoung and doctoral candidate Michelle Crick share the same supervisor in the person of Prof. Chantal Backman, and have worked together on a number of research projects where their much different backgrounds in life and work experience have meshed quite effectively.
Before coming to uOttawa, Cho-Young worked for three years as an RN in London, Ont., where she provided bedside care on a clinical neurosciences unit for older adults who had suffered head trauma from falling at home. Hermasters thesis research is allowing her to seek better ways of preventing falls for a wider community. The UK-trained Crick, on the other hand, joined the grad studies program as a registered mental health nurse with years of work and research experience behind her, and will soon defend her PhD thesis on the role of regulatory processes in the care of older people living with depression in long-term care in Ontario. Both nurses continue to be actively involved in research projects related to their areas of study.
An innovative “Five Senses” collaborative research project they worked on together for Prof. Backman, funded by the university’s LIFE Research Institute and Sodexo Inc., studied the negative effects on quality of life for people living in long-term care whose senses of hearing, vision, taste, smell, and touch have become less acute. Their team produced an important sensory environment audit tool that could soon help long-term care homes offer better quality services to seniors.
“To pursue an academic career, you need to be working in teams with other people who are on an academic pathway,” Crick said. “Danielle and I learned so much on this one project alone from being able to flex our skills in a safe space, working under the guidance of an experienced researcher.”
For her MScN thesis on the fear of falling in older adults, Cho-Young conducted a mixed-method study through The Ottawa Hospital’s geriatric outpatient fall prevention program, using a questionnaire and followup interviews to gather her data.
“Working with the geriatric day hospital was amazing,” she said. “The way the university works hand-in-hand with The Ottawa Hospital has been a huge game-changer for me.”
“And I’ve had a really good PhD journey with my supervisor and committee,” Crick added. “I feel that it will prepare me sufficiently for the defence ofmy thesis. I’m relying on that process.”
For Sauvé-Schenk, who successfully defended her own PhD thesis last year, uOttawa’s collegial interaction among graduate students, professors and other researchers is of benefit to everyone.
“The most important thing to remember is that you don’t do a thesis on your own,” she said. “It’s the work of a community of people who are supporting you to succeed.”
For more information on uOttawa’s outstanding programs in Graduate Studies, or to request a campus tour, visit www.uottawa.ca/graduate-studies. The university is ready to greet you warmly in English or French to discuss your goals.