introduced a sports sciences fellowship in 1994 and expanded its capacity from just five candidates per year to 10 in 2009 to accommodate and feed the de-mand for an increasing number of high-quality academic and research leaders for the profession. As well, the program was an early adopter of the new culture of interprofes-sional education and collaboration that is shaping the wider health-care system in Canada and abroad. This is resulting in the recruitment of faculty members into the program from a range of health-care and basic science disciplines, and means that graduate students/residents can go on to support interprofessional educa-tion through placements and academic partnerships with other health-care and laboratory facilities. Dr. Rhonda Kirkwood is a Clinical Sciences Fellow who completed her graduate studies at CMCC in 2000. The former assistant dean of Professional Ed-ucation at CMCC, Dr. Kirkwood is now at CBI Health in Bedford, Nova Sco-tia, working within a multidisciplinary team of physiotherapists, occupational therapists and medical physicians and is completing her masters in rehabilitation sciences through McMaster University in Ontario. “Completing the clinical sciences graduate program at CMCC gave me the ability to work within multidisciplinary teams with confidence,” notes Dr. Kirk-wood, “and to demonstrate, with excel-lence, what I can do as a chiropractor.” Stern, a fellow of CMCC’s clinical sciences program who now serves as director of graduate studies at CMCC. “As well as being available on a part-time basis, there is flexibility to the pro-gram. As a professional master’s, it allows individuals to tailor courses or programs that parallel their practice or personal in-terests. A candidate may choose to focus on a variety of topics such as geriatrics, chronic pain or disability prevention, among others.” Dr. Jean Moss, president of CMCC, sees the program as a natural evolution within graduate studies at CMCC. “We’re seeing much more interprofessional col-laboration than in the past,” says Dr. Moss. “Offering a master’s degree helps to harmonize the academic qualifications among professionals.” In addition to the AECC/Bourne-mouth University Master’s program, CMCC’s division of graduate studies will begin accepting applications this fall for its newest offering: the Work Disabil-ity Prevention Program, which will be offered as a stand-alone advanced cer-tificate program and as part of a profes-sional master’s program in partnership with AECC. FACING TOMORROW But for all the innovations and successes of the past 36 years, the next 36 promise to be better still for the graduate studies programs at CMCC – and 2011 is shap-ing up to be a pivotal year. Among the significant developments, a new part-nership was struck between CMCC and the Anglo-European College of Chiro-practic (AECC) in Bournemouth, Eng-land, giving CMCC’s postgraduate stu-dents the ability to enroll in the AECC’s Master of Science Advanced Profession-al Practice (Clinical Sciences) program, known as AECC/Bournemouth Univer-sity Master’s degree. “We’re very excited about this pro-gram because it finally offers the oppor-tunity for more chiropractors to access postgraduate education,” says Dr. Paula www.canadianchiropractor.ca WORK DISABILITY PREVENTION – A NEW FRONTIER Developed and led by orthopedic sur-geon and work disability prevention pioneer Dr. Patrick Loisel, the program aims to impart a high-level understand-ing of the pain problem and causes of disability, as well as biological, psycho-logical, cultural, legal and systemic im-pacts and influencers. The program is a timely addition to CMCC’s graduate academic calendar: in Canada alone the cost of work-related disability is more than $6.7 billion each year and, with an aging workforce, in-creased rates of disability and rising health and drug costs, there is a recog-nized need for expertise in assisting in-jured and disabled workers to return to work safely and sustainably. “What’s more,” says Dr. Loisel, “CMCC seemed a natural fit for such a program.” “The value in working with chiroprac-tors is their holistic perspective when it comes to patient care,” he says. “Often the nature of their work requires them to understand their patients’ lives to the degree that is optimal for successful dis-ability prevention.” Beginning in January 2012, the new contemporary graduate-level program in Work Disability Prevention will provide education and training for health pro-fessionals to appropriately co-ordinate processes for the effective return of the disabled worker to the workplace. The program will be offered at two levels: • Return-to-Work Specialty Con-sulting Advanced Certificate Pro-gram – two years; • AECC/Bournemouth University Master’s Program – three years, including the CMCC Return-to-Work Specialty Consulting Ad-vanced Certificate Program. In preparation for the program’s practicum component and/or final the-sis/project, course work explores a range of subjects, including: • The Work Disability Paradigm – bi-ological, psychological and social dimensions and interrelations in the pain problem and pain man-agement strategies; • Making a Work Disability Diag-nosis – causes and psychological and behavioural implications of work disability, and facilitating a disability diagnosis; • Research Methodology – basics and best practices of study design, sampling, source of data and data analysis; • The Stakeholders’ Systems – the nature and origin of work disabil-ity within the context of workers compensation boards and public and private insurers; • Coordinating Return to Work – ef-fective case co-ordination and identifying systemic influences on a patient’s thoughts and be-haviours to achieve a safe and sustainable return to work. BEING THE SOURCE FOR INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION But while doctors of chiropractic are well suited for the field of work of disability prevention, in keeping with CMCC’s cul-ture of interprofessional education and collaboration, the new graduate program is also open to students with a health professional degree in medicine, occupa-tional therapy or physical therapy, or a master’s in social work. Canadian ChiropraCtor | September 2011 • 9
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