Sarah graduated in May 2014 as one of the first MRSc learners to complete the course-based option. The following month she accepted a leadership role as Occupational Therapy Practice Coordinator at GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre. Sarah didn’t choose the course-based option initially, but ultimately felt that it gave her “the chance to try on new topics and that really worked for me, and made a huge difference to what happened next with work opportunities…”
For 13 years, Sarah was the Program Coordinator of an East Vancouver Arts Studio (a Vancouver Coastal Health community mental health unit), where she planned on conducting her MRSc major project. Her program had been through numerous funding threats and was cut just prior to commencing the project. Although a private donor offered short-term funding, the events created a need for an alternative to the major project, which presented a new opportunity. As Sarah points out “Circumstantially, it worked to focus on discrete courses while everything was going on with the Arts Studio. Keeping the workload in ‘course’ chunks was more manageable while working full time and managing a family. It also gave me the option of moving into a new interest area in leadership”. Sarah took RHSC 583 Applying Research to Practice with a focus on leadership management, followed by a comprehensive literature review on healthcare leadership in times of prolonged uncertainty, completed as a directed study. “It turned out to be a big topic with little literature, particularly on rehabilitation leadership. There was a lot of discussion suggesting that a new form of leader should be available but nobody was saying how to promote this, or the cost of doing so…” Sarah describes looking at resilience and strength-based approaches as she engaged in self-reflection and identifying leadership skills she had been developing and using. Sarah’s work has generated interest from people in upper level management, and she is now planning on submitting her work for publication.
When asked about her new leadership role with GF Strong, Sarah says: “The MRSc should be the training course for this job… the experiences I had led me into this job in a completely different practice area and I landed on the ground running. I could not have gone from a mental health leader into this role without that bridge.” Sarah describes the MRSc as “an extremely personal journey that I could tailor to my professional interests”. Of the course based option, she reflects: “I likely would have chosen it anyway. Going back to school, taking my time, and doing a course based masters allowed me to re-invent myself as a person and professional.”