Name: Heather Worthington
Program: MPT/PhD
Supervisor: Dr. Linda Li
Tell us a little bit about your lab!
I work in the Arthritis & Knowledge Translation Research Program, led by Dr. Linda Li. Our team conducts research that aims to improve the health of people with arthritis by improving shared decision making between people with arthritis and their healthcare providers, and developing interventions with the use of wearables and tailored counselling to promote a balance of physical activity, rest, and sleep for people with arthritis. My research topic is a bit different than most of the work conducted in the lab, as I am interested in understanding access issues in outpatient physiotherapy (PT). This work was inspired by my experience after I fractured my pelvis, wrist, and had numerous soft tissue injuries from a car accident 4 years ago, as well as my past research work in the area of access to medicines. For my PhD, I am focusing on access to PT after ACL injury, which often leads to osteoarthritis.
Tell us a little bit about your MPT/PhD program!
The MPT/PhD program is a wild ride. For the past two years I have been pretty much fully occupied by my clinical training, which on its own is an incredibly intensive program. I have tried to stay involved a little bit in the lab and keep some momentum going on my thesis, but I will admit this has been extremely challenging. Despite this, I am very glad to be becoming a clinician-scientist. My clinical experiences thus far have really changed how I look at research and particularly administrative data, and given me a deep understanding of the health system my research is studying. I have found clinical work to be extremely rewarding, and look forward to having a career where I can both work with people one-on-one to improve their health, as well as spend time working in the research world to help improve our healthcare system.
What project are you currently working on?
As I mentioned, I am mostly focused on finishing up the MPT program and getting through the licensing process at the moment, but will be jumping back into my PhD work at the end of the year. The project I have spent some time working on recently as I needed to have a small project related to my thesis that could be conducted as my research project in the MPT program, is a qualitative study looking at the experiences of people with accessing PT following an ACL injury. This has been an interesting one for me as up to this point I have been strictly a quantitative researcher, so diving into qualitative work has been a steep learning curve. However, I am excited about the context and richness that this work will provide to support my larger quantitative thesis project.
What do you like to do outside of academia?
I love to travel, both domestically and internationally. I have been to every Canadian province and the Yukon, explored Iceland, spent a night at the top of Huangshan in China, been many places in the states (the ones I keep going back to are New York and Hawai’i), and to England, Scotland, and Hong Kong. Our next trip is to Fiji and New Zealand, and my husband and I are looking forward to continuing to explore the world in the years to come. Though we love to explore, there’s nothing better than relaxing at home with my cat and my husband. I also enjoy playing video games. I do trivia most weeks with my pals from before I started this wild MPT/PhD journey. I like to cook, and I am a big musical theatre fan.
…and I wouldn’t be a PT student without giving you a list of the physical activities I enjoy. I got into swimming after the car accident and have been enjoying it since. I hike, I bike, I do yoga, and I grew up doing many styles of dance and would love to get back into it in the near future now that I’m going to have a bit more free time and we are in a post-COVID restrictions and post-Heather has a broken pelvis world.
Congratulations Heather on being our featured Student of the Month for July!
Interested in seeing what else our Rehabilitation Sciences students and trainees are working on? Stay tuned for our next feature!