Noreen Yamamoto, a certified occupational therapy assistant at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation, receives a Shining Lights award for her and Good Shepherd's partnership with Moravian.
A certified occupational therapy assistant at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation, Noreen Yamamoto has extensive experience in advocating for others. Noreen facilitates Good Shepherd’s Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Support Group, which offers patients and local individuals living with spinal cord injuries the opportunity to connect with one another and take advantage of educational, recreational, and supportive resources. Since the support group partnered with Moravian’s Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program in 2022, the benefits for SCI group members sharing their experiences and DPT students learning how to care for their patients more effectively have been extraordinary.
Kimberly Wynarczuk, assistant professor in Moravian’s DPT program, was interested in partnering with Good Shepherd’s Spinal Cord Injury Support Group to offer her students valuable educational experience. When she reached out to Good Shepherd, Noreen jumped at the opportunity, and the SCI support group and Moravian’s DPT program partnered in summer of 2022. Noreen helped match students in Wynarczuk’s class on psychosocial issues in clinical practice with members of the Spinal Cord Injury Support Group. The goal was not to provide physical therapy sessions but rather build friendships to help students see the world through the perspective of someone living and coping with a disability.
True friendships formed between the two groups. The students and SCI group members met in the community, at restaurants and sporting events, and in settings as personal as each other’s homes. The support group members enjoyed the interactions and felt satisfied their experiences were valued—the struggles and frustrations they encountered through their injuries were becoming a catalyst for changing a part of the healthcare landscape, helping develop clinicians with a better understanding of patients’ needs and concerns. Moravian’s DPT students were given experiential learning opportunities that helped them think about their future patients and clients as people, not just as diagnoses. “As a physical therapist, it’s important to treat people like people, regardless of their condition or disability. When it comes to our patients, yes, there is the clinical-patient relationship, but it is also human to human,” according to a DPT student in the program.
The SCI support group partnered with Moravian in 2023, and again the program was successful, providing students with valuable educational experience and the opportunity for friendships to form across the group. Noreen is already receiving inquiries from SCI support group members to be matched with the next class of DPT students to provide valuable opportunities and develop genuine connections. Moravian is thankful to have Noreen and Good Shepherd Rehabilitation as valued partners because of the extraordinary knowledge and experience DPT students have gained through the program. By realizing that physical therapy is more than just addressing their patients’ physical needs, Moravian’s DPT students are learning how to change the field of physical therapy.