Newswise — The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University has launched the first program of its kind in Canada - the Interprofessional Certificate in Advanced Neuroscience-Stroke Care.
Launched last September, the certificate is a unique partnership between The Chang School, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the North and East GTA Ontario Stroke Region and Network, the Department of Psychology and the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing and professors from the Faculty of Community Services.
"The certificate beautifully fits Ryerson's mission of serving societal demand while extending psychology's reach in the area of real-world applications," says Dr. Jean-Paul Boudreau, Chair of Ryerson’s Department of Psychology. "With over 240,000 health-care professionals in Ontario, I predict a great deal of excitement and interest in this program."
The program was funded by the province’s HealthForceOntario to address the pressing need for frontline expertise in stroke care in the Ontario Stroke System. A leading cause of death and adult neurological disability, stroke costs the Ontario economy almost a billion dollars a year. Over 90,000 Ontarians are living with effects of stroke such as motor, sensory, cognitive and communication deficits. Across Canada, one in three deaths is due to heart disease and stroke.
"The program was designed to meet a very important need for the education of frontline health-care professionals who look after stroke patients," said Dr. Sandra Black, Brill Professor of Neurology, University of Toronto, and Medical Director of the Regional Stroke Centre for the North and East GTA Ontario Stroke Region and Network. "We gravitated to The Chang School because of its expertise in continuing and distance education, and we haven't looked back."
To ensure access for busy full-time health-care workers, courses are delivered through self-study, online material and videoconferencing through the Ontario Telemedicine Network.
"This is the first neuroscience-stroke care education program in Canada with an interprofessional development and delivery focus and it brings experts from both the clinical and academic worlds together," says Patsy Cho, Certificate Project Manager on secondment from Sunnybrook. "We're all pieces of the interprofessional puzzle."
Dr. Tisha Ornstein is the lead developer of the certificate program's neuropsychology component. An assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and a licensed clinical neuropsychologist, Dr. Ornstein was a lead developer in the brain structures and cognition course, which explores brain structure, function, consequences of brain injury and related clinical applications.
"Stroke-care professionals will gain a wide breadth of knowledge with the latest neuroscience findings that they'll be able to apply to their patients," says Dr. Ornstein.
"Creating the program has been exciting, energizing and exhausting, but was ultimately quite gratifying," says Martha Lee-Blickstead, Program Director, Community Services, The Chang School. "We're breaking new ground."
Ryerson University is Canada's leader in innovative career-focused education, offering close to 100 PhD, master’s, and undergraduate programs in the Faculty of Arts; the Faculty of Communication & Design; the Faculty of Community Services; the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Science; and the Ted Rogers School of Management. Ryerson University has graduate and undergraduate enrolment of 25,000 students. With more than 68,000 registrations annually, The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education is Canada's leading provider of university-based adult education.
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