Physical Therapist, Hyman Gee and Occupational Therapist, Joy Wang are the Clinical Instructors at Royal Columbian Hospital’s Student Rehabilitation Outpatient Clinic (SROC). They were recently named as this year’s recipients of the Practice Education Team Award. Awarded annually by the Division of Inteprofessional Education and Practice at the College of Health Disciplines at UBC, the award recognizes an outstanding health care team that demonstrates interprofessional education and collaborative practice on an ongoing basis to a variety of learners. They must role model and teach interprofessional competencies to students at the pre-entry to practice level.
The clinic has been educating both PT and OT students in tandem since 2010. To date they have educated ~ 140 students from across the country. They have also opened the clinic to undergraduate MD students and rehabilitation assistant students and the clinic has treated over 1100 patients.
To quote from a letter in support of this award written by a physiotherapist who had enjoyed a placement in the clinic during her training:
As a fellow physiotherapy colleague of Hyman’s, I continue to admire his passion and proficiency as an educator for future physiotherapists and as an advocate of inter-professional collaboration and teamwork….. Hyman is the epitome of an effective clinician and clinical educator….
*SROC was started with funding in part from the University of British Columbia Teaching and Learning Enhancement fund. This model has been extremely successful and has since been repeated:
• Fraser Health’s second Student Rehabilitation Outpatient Clinic operating out of Surrey Memorial Hospital.
• Vancouver Coastal Health operates the NMS Outpatient Physiotherapy Student Clinic at the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre in Vancouver. It opened April 2011.
• The first student-led clinic located in northern B.C., Prince Rupert Interprofessional Student-led Model (PRISM), opened at Prince Rupert Regional Hospital in August of 2013