Summer 2022 Research Update

By Cheryl Kozey, Research Coordinator

Photo Credit: Bruce Bottomley

Greetings to our School of Physiotherapy community,
 
I hope you are enjoying your summer, whether travelling, visiting family and friends, or just relaxing and are keeping safe. The School of Physiotherapy faculty and students have been highly productive and successful since our winter newsletter. Here are some highlights.
 
Research Planning
The School’s  Research Committee (Drs. Boe, Kehler and I) organized a half-day research planning session with one of the objectives being to connect in person for the first time as a group since winter of 2020.
 
First on the agenda was a tour of our laboratories, as some of our new faculty would not have seen these facilities. The level of engagement and excitement from both our researchers and staff members was fabulous.
 
Second on the list was a half-day planning session to review and determine if we are meeting our School’s strategic planning research goals and focus on how best to achieve our goals moving forward. A clear, key outcome was our success in recruiting high quality research faculty.  Over the past 5-years we have recruited five early career researchers; Drs. Moyer, Theou, Kehler, McArthur and the most recent Dr. Quigley who will join us on August 1, 2022. Their successes with grant capture, publications, presentation and recruiting high quality research students are strengthening the School’s research culture.  The research they are conducting is impactful. They are educating the next generation of researchers in rehabilitation whose work will improve the health and well-being of older adults - those with musculoskeletal issues and those with physical limitations linked to HIV.
 
Another key outcome of our planning session was the importance of communication and linking with our key stakeholders. To that end we are working toward reinstating “PT Matters”. For those of you who haven’t been around long enough to remember, PT Matters was a series of presentations on different topics including research that was attended by faculty, students, our broader physiotherapy clinical community and stakeholders.  Our intent is to begin the series this fall, with two sessions per term. We will keep you posted. 
 
Physiotherapy Community Event
As Career Stream Instructor, Kate Grosweiner, was organizing a community event to recognize our physiotherapy community who are vital to our educational programs, she asked whether a few researchers could present at this event as a way of introducing our new faculty members to the community. On May 19th, we did just that and it was great fun! We had a good number of community physiotherapists, students, faculty and staff in the audience and online. The event included presentations from:

• Dr. C McArthur on “Preventing falls, fractures, and functional decline in home and long-term care”. (Dr. McArthur joined the School in September 2020)
• Dr Olga Theou on “Frailty and Physical Activity”, who is a Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity, Mobility, and Healthy Aging. (Dr. Theou joined the School in 2019) 
  
• Dr. Scott Kehler on "Frailty in people living with cardiovascular disease". (Dr. Kehler joined the School in 2019)
• Drs. D Rutherford/R. Moyer on “Research from the Joint Action Research laboratory” (Dr Rutherford joined the School in 2012 and Dr. Moyer joined the School in 2017.)
• Drs. C Kozey/R.Moyer on “Musculoskeletal health: Mobility for life”.

The interest and feedback from this event support our idea to move forward in the fall with a PT matters presentation series and we hope it will grow with feedback from our community. If you have any ideas, please send along to physiotherapy@dal.ca.
 
Grants and Awards
We have had great success with research funding grants and awards please take a moment to click on the researcher publication links to get a sense of the tremendous dissemination effort and impact of their research. One notable highlight is Dr. Olga Theou being selected as a recipient of the 2022 President’s Research Excellence Award for Emerging Investigators. This award honours those who, early in their careers, have made noteworthy contributions to Dalhousie’s research culture. This achievement will be formally recognized at the upcoming Dalhousie Legacy Awards in November - congratulations Dr. Theou.  
 
Master Students Thesis and Grants
Our Master of Rehabilitation Research (MScRR) students have also been highly successful and have been working hard to complete their degrees. The School had four MScRR thesis defences this summer - congratulations to all for their successful completion of their MScRR degree requirements. The first was on July 19th where Mr. Evan MacEachern’s thesis defense titled, “Comparing Virtual and Center Based Cardiac Rehabilitation on Changes in Frailty” was conducted via Teams (supervisor Dr. Kehler), on July 21st, Mr. Jack Quach, thesis defence titled, “The Impact of Frailty on Long-Term Adverse Outcomes of Cardiac Rehabilitation Patients” was conducted via Teams (supervisor Dr. Kehler) and on August 9th Devan Pancura defended "To grip or not to grip", (supervisor Dr. Boe). On August 15th David Bowman defended "Learning model action observation: An investigation into long-term motor learning outcomes" (supervisor Dr. Boe).

This month Ms. Niousha Alizadeh Saravi, MScRR successfully presented her thesis proposal entitled, “Barriers and Facilitators to Receiving Adequate Nutrition in Long-term care Residents with Moderate to Severe Dementia” via Teams (Supervisor. Dr.  McAuthur), and we have four more proposals and two more defences coming up.  

Student success in external scholarship competitions continue with incoming MSc RR student Juliet Row receiving a Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship (NSGS), an NSERC CGS-M Scholarship, and the prestigious Killam Pre-doctoral Scholarship.

PhD in health students who are working with PT researchers, received external awards including Mariana Gonzalez Lara (Scotia Scholar Award (SSA) and NSGS) who will work on the impact of diet and nutritional status on levels of frailty (Supervisor: Dr. Scott Kehler), Michael Ibekaku (SSA) who will work on developing a theory-guided, evidence-based training program for rehabilitation providers working with residents with dementia in long-term care (Supervisor: Dr. Caitlin McArthur), Sarah Remedios (NSGS) working with supervisors Dr. Derek Rutherford and Dr Ivan Wong on understanding shoulder mechanics linked with rotator cuff tears and surgical management. Jack Quash with supervisor Dr. Scott Kehler will be working on the influencence of frailty on cardiac rehabilitation: a harmonized analysis of five cardiac rehabilitation databases.



Congratulations to all our faculty and students and all the best for a great fall!