‘Community helped make this happen’
Acadian Shores Health Centre looking to give back through its services and also community events
“We just want to be an option for the community where you can go to one space and see a lot of different services ...” Maria Wamback Co-owner
A new health centre in Yarmouth is feeling its community roots.
Not only does it feel like it was helped along by the community in starting up and offering the services it does, but it also hopes to become involved in the community.
“We are very excited to offer this to the community. It's been a lot of work, took a lot of different hands involved in making this,” said Chelsea Surette during a recent open house celebrating the opening of the Acadian Shores Health Centre.
Surette is co-owner of the health centre and a registered occupational therapist with over four years of experience in a private practice setting.
The Acadian Shores Health Centre is a multidisciplinary clinic offering therapeutic services, including different types of physiotherapy and occupational therapy services.
Some examples of these services include physiotherapy assessment, pain and injury management, return-towork planning, post-op rehabilitation, concussion management, cognitive rehabilitation, office ergonomic assessment, long-term disability, motor vehicle accident rehabilitation, and more. It also provides services through the Worker's Compensation Board of Nova Scotia.
Acadian Shores Health Centre opened in January.
“We kind of feel as though our community helped make this happen,” Surette says, adding as a means of further giving back, the health centre is hosting its first community event on April 16 called Yarmouth Concussion Café.
Acadian Shores has partnered with Brain Injury NS to organize this free community peer support event open to anyone who is on a concussion journey.
“Hearing from others with similar experiences and how they navigated their journey can be invaluable to the recovery process,” Brain Injury NS writes in a post on their Facebook page. The April 16 event will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. People can register online at braininjuryns.com/cafe.
The Acadian Shores Health Centre is located at 49 Chebogue Road in Arcadia. People will most likely be familiar with its location as being the former Tri-County Veterinary Clinic.
Adapting the space from its former use to its current use wasn't too difficult.
“It was a vet clinic and it was pretty much set up for a human clinic. We just had to make some changes, but it really worked out well,” Surette says.
Maria Wamback is also a co-owner of Acadian Shores Health Centre and is a registered physiotherapist with eight years of experience in a private practice setting.
She says a vision for this health centre existed for a while.
“Then we started looking for a space and tried a couple of options. Then this just kind of fell into our laps,” she says. “We were very lucky. It was a 'right place, right time' sort of situation.”
Surette and Wamback had worked together through previous employment before deciding to branch out. The Acadian Shores staff has both friendship and family connections. For instance, Surette's sister Chloe Nickerson, a registered physiotherapist resident, works here.
There will also be a massage therapist starting in May who has a family connection to Lisa d'Eon, who works admin at the centre.
The health centre hopes this sense and feeling of family extends to its patients.
Asked what they hope most to see come out of this new venture, Wamback says, “We just wanted to make a multidisciplinary environment where you can see whatever health-care practitioner you need to. We'll see kind of what directions we end up going in with expanding.”
“We have our physio and massage. Then it would be great if we had some other options, even different types of counseling services or talk therapy,” she adds. “We just want to be an option for the community where you can go to one space and see a lot of different services, whatever your needs may be, whether that's medical or holistic – to kind of bridge those gaps a little.”
People requiring services can be referred by a doctor, or they can do selfreferrals.
“We opened our doors on Jan. 10, which was a Wednesday, and we've been here full-time ever since Monday to Friday,” says Surette.
“It's going really well. People keep coming down the driveway and checking to see what it says on our sign,” she adds with a laugh. “The open house was to let people come in and see the space, including for the people that have been driving to the door.”
You can further visit Acadian Shores Health Centre by visiting their website www.acadianshores.ca or visiting their Facebook page. The telephone number is 902-881-2223.