There's a steady supply of people in need of the help of a therapist to overcome injuries or regain mobility after surgery and UNBC student Regan Daoust has taken on the role of tour guide on that road to recovery.
She's part of the first crop of masters of physiotherapy students putting theory into practice in real workplace settings in rural and Northern B.C. clinics.
"My family's up here, my husband's family is here and it's good to be back in the community that I'm from," said Daoust, 26, a Duchess Park secondary school graduate who went on to earn a biochemistry/molecular biology degree at UNBC.
"I just started this in August at UBC and I love the program. It's really hard, but at the same time I'm learning so much."
Based on the success of the Northern Medical Program in turning out graduate doctors willing to set up practices in rural and northern B.C., UNBC and UBC established the master of physiotherapy program. The two universities have joined forces with Northern Health and local physiotherapists to form the Northern and Rural Cohort (NRC) educational partnership.
The province is funding the program at UNBC to help address a critical shortage of trained therapists and is targeting students who live in the North to increase the chance of them staying in the area to practice their profession.
"There are a lot of communities up in the North lacking physiotherapists so hopefully with the Northern Rural Cohort we can get some of those spots filled," said Daoust.
Ten first-year students arrived in Prince George last week to begin their work practicums in various northern B.C. locations, five of whom are part of the NRC pilot project, which will be launched in September.
Daoust will serve two consecutive five-week practicums working in private homes in Prince George as part of the Highland Health Centre's Home and Community Care program. Each student in the UNBC program will be required to complete four of their six work terms with local physiotherapists in rural settings.
The masters program covers 26 consecutive months and will produce entry-level professionals. Each student must already have any undergraduate degree, which includes several science prerequisite courses.
Having qualified physiotherapists trained in the province would eliminate the licensing headaches and the additional cost of recruiting internationally-educated physiotherapists. Until the NRC program started, that has been the only successful method of finding trained physiotherpists willing to locate in northern rural areas.
"We have almost a crisis-level shortage of physiotherapists and occupational therapists across rural and northern B.C.," says Robin Roots, the NRC co-ordinator of clinical education. "So the intent behind the program is recruitment and retention of physiotherapists. We are targeting students whose residences are in the North and we'll train them in the North with the hopes they will return to the North.
"If you look at the numbers in B.C. at the moment, only three per cent of new graduates stay in the province and they stay in the Lower Mainland. In B.C., 93 per cent of all physiotherapists work in urban areas, so that doesn't leave a lot to go around to the rest of the province."
UBC accepts 80 masters of physiotherapy students each year and all those students will complete their academic studies at the UBC campus. Twenty of that group will fulfill their clinical requirements in the North.
Down the road, UNBC is hoping to offer the academic side of the program as well, but that will hinge on securing more government funding.
