As the wife of a naval officer, Jill Hooper is accustomed to changing locations. A civilian physiotherapist employed by the Department of National Defence (DND) since 2005, the 34-year-old has worked on Canadian Forces bases in Kingston and Halifax. When she moved to San Diego in 2011 with her now six-year-old son and her husband following his latest posting, the distance learning offered by the University of British Columbia Master of Rehabilitation Science (MRSc) program allowed her to continue the degree, while on leave from the DND. She will graduate in the spring of 2013.
“I was very interested in pursuing my education for the satisfaction of completing a Master’s degree, to remain competitive and marketable and to increase my skill set within the physiotherapy world as the profession moves from a bachelor’s degree to a Master’s,” she recalled.
The predominance of relevant courses added to the appeal. “I found that the courses really helped you to take the literature and the evidence and apply it to your clinical setting. Almost all of us were working full-time and almost every assignment could be applied back to the working environment. All of the courses made sense; with things like program development you identified a need in your workplace and helped to develop something that would be beneficial. And simply being able to understand the literature better was very useful and eye-opening for me,” she said.
Jill became a more scholarly practitioner as a result. The Master’s experience “renewed my inclination to go back to the literature and provided me with the opportunity to really identify which parts of the literature I can apply directly to my practice. It has helped me look more critically at what I do and why.” That in turn increased her confidence in decision-making and advocacy in her workplace.
She also valued the “outstanding” collaborative experience with colleagues in the program from all over the world.
By Heather Kent