Publications by authors named "Jarus T"

Ensuring equitable access to professional education programs for learners who need accommodations is distinctly challenging when education moves beyond the classroom into clinical or fieldwork sites. Fieldwork educators and university academic coordinators who arrange fieldwork placements work with university accessibility services and students to arrange required accommodations, while preserving confidentiality, maintaining high learning standards, and ensuring attainment of professional competencies. This work is complicated by time pressures and heavy caseloads in fieldwork settings.

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Article Synopsis
  • Developing a strong professional identity is key for healthcare professionals, influenced by critical social perspectives, especially regarding disabled individuals.
  • This study investigates how disabled students and clinicians in healthcare shape their professional identity through in-depth interviews, revealing two main aspects: identity formation processes' context and identity navigation between professional and disability identities.
  • The findings highlight the need for supportive environments to aid disabled students and practitioners in negotiating their identities, suggesting a re-evaluation of professionalism concepts in healthcare.
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Aim: This study explores and compares the impact of in-person and online versions of a Research-based Theatre production named "Alone in the Ring," aimed at increasing knowledge and fostering positive attitudes towards persons with disabilities in healthcare professions. The study examines changes in attitudes towards disabled persons in healthcare professions, levels of engagement in the play and knowledge about the experiences and challenges of disabled individuals in healthcare professions. It also investigates possible actions to increase inclusion for disabled persons in healthcare education and practice.

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Introduction: Despite legislation mandating accommodation policies in postsecondary education, support for students with disabilities is often not implemented within health and human services (HHS) education programs, particularly in fieldwork settings. As part of a Canada-wide study exploring the experiences of disabled students in 10 HHS programs, we examined how HHS students described their experiences accessing accommodations in fieldwork to understand how conceptions of disability relate to students' fieldwork experiences. Using a critical disability studies framework, we explored how HHS fieldwork education understands disability, accommodations and professional competence and what those understandings reveal about the discrepancy between mandated accommodations and what happens in practice.

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Children and youth with autism use screens in their daily lives and in their rehabilitation programs. Although parents and clinicians experience specific challenges when supporting positive screen time use of children and youth with autism, no detailed information for this group exists. Therefore, this study aimed to develop clear guidelines that are agreed by expert clinicians and parents of children and youth with autism.

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Background: Children who are neurodiverse have traditionally been segregated from their peers in community-based programs, despite evidence of health benefits of inclusive education.

Objectives: This community-initiated project aims to explore barriers and facilitators to inclusive aquatics programming for children with developmental and/or mental health challenges.

Methods: Using a participatory-action research methodology, semi-structured interviews and focus groups were conducted with 14 participants from various stakeholder groups, including parents of children who are neurodiverse, helping professionals, and community programmers.

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There is a lack of knowledge on the scope and nature of the research by faculty members in occupational science (OS) and/or occupational therapy (OT) programs in Canada. To describe the research activities of faculty members in these programs and directions. A cross-sectional survey was distributed to 173 faculty members across all 14 Canadian OT that addressed: 1) research topics and methods, 2) populations, and 3) funding.

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Introduction: People with disabilities are underrepresented in health professions education and practice. Barriers for inclusion include stigma, disabling discourses, discriminatory programme design and oppressive interactions. Current understandings of this topic remain descriptive and fragmented.

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Social support is vital in promoting the health, well-being, and performance of students and clinicians in health professions. Health settings' demanding and competitive nature imposes unique challenges on students and clinicians with disabilities. This paper aims to explore the trajectories and experiences of social support interactions amongst students and clinicians with disabilities in health professions.

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Background: Despite efforts to promote inclusion of people living with disabilities in health and human service education and professions, students and clinicians living with disabilities continue to face powerful barriers, arising most notably from the stigma and negative attitudes of their peers. Increased awareness of these lived experiences are needed to affect attitudinal changes and reduce barriers to participation in those professions. To achieve this, information (stories) must be presented to learners in a way that promotes emotional engagement and highlights these issues from multiple perspectives.

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Indigenous Peoples are underrepresented in many of the Health and Human Services Educational Programs (HHSEP, e.g.: Nursing, Social Work).

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Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept; it is increasingly being integrated into health care. As studies on attitudes toward AI have primarily focused on physicians, there is a need to assess the perspectives of students across health care disciplines to inform future curriculum development.

Objective: This study aims to explore and identify gaps in the knowledge that Canadian health care students have regarding AI, capture how health care students in different fields differ in their knowledge and perspectives on AI, and present student-identified ways that AI literacy may be incorporated into the health care curriculum.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to wide-scale changes in societal organization. This has dramatically altered people's daily activities, especially among families with young children, those living with disabilities such as spinal cord injury (SCI), those who have experienced a stroke, and older adults.

Objective: We aim to (1) investigate how COVID-19 restrictions influence daily activities, (2) track the psychosocial effects of these restrictions over time, and (3) identify strategies to mitigate the potential negative effects of these restrictions.

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The desire to support student learning and professional development, in combination with accreditation requirements, necessitates the need to evaluate the learning environment of educational programs. The Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES) is a recently-developed global measure of the learning environment for health professions programs. This paper provides evidence of the applicability of the HELES for evaluating the learning environment across four health professions programs: medicine, nursing, occupational therapy and pharmaceutical sciences.

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Students and clinicians with disabilities are underrepresented in the academic health programs and professional clinical settings. Disability studies foregrounds the unique ways of knowing and being that clinicians with disabilities can offer. Based on a larger grounded theory study of the experiences of students and clinicians with disabilities, this article examines the role that clinicians' abilities to draw on their personal experiences of living with a disability have on their interactions with clients.

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Research has demonstrated that videogame programs can be an effective intervention targeting social challenges among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite the rapid growth in developing videogame programs, incorporation of stakeholders' views has been limited. This project aimed to identify the design elements that should be considered during development of videogame programs for children with ASD, from the perspectives of stakeholders.

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Disabled people are underrepresented within healthcare professions, although their participation has potential benefits for them personally, and for broader society. Disabled peoples' participation in healthcare professions is limited by assumptions about disability. Little research explores how healthcare professions can be organized to support disabled peoples' employment.

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Social participation is one of the most important predictors of the children's physical and mental health. Although it is evidenced that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have restricted social participation, it is unclear which factors play a significant role. This research aimed to uncover perceived barriers of social participation by involving 26 stakeholders including parents of children with ASD, youth with ASD, and clinicians working with individuals with ASD in focus groups and interviews.

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This study describes prosthetic rehabilitation services provided to individuals who have had a lower limb amputation in Canada. This cross-sectional survey study used an online survey to collect data from facilities that provide lower limb prosthetic rehabilitation; it included questions about approaches and types of service, therapies, focus of service, and health care providers. One representative from each facility was asked to complete the survey.

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects socio-emotional skills and perspective-taking abilities. Although social stories in a form of virtual reality program can help children with ASD, developing them and identifying appropriate responses might be subjective and thus challenging. Using Delphi method, and guided by general case training, we involved 63 parents and clinicians of individuals with ASD, in two rounds of online iteration to refine the stories.

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Background: Despite the popularity of commercial games in lower limb prosthetic rehabilitation, data about their prevalence of use as well as therapists' perspectives about these games are still lacking.

Objectives: To learn about the prevalence of use of commercial games in lower limb prosthetic rehabilitation and therapists' perspectives about these games.

Study Design: Cross-sectional.

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Objectives: To determine the Canadian age-adjusted incidence rates of lower limb amputation (LLA) by province, sex, level, and cause of amputation.

Methods: Data on all hospital discharges associated with LLA from April 1, 2006, to March 31, 2012, were obtained from the Canadian Institute for Health Information's Discharge Abstract Database. National and provincial age-adjusted rates were calculated per 100 000 individuals by sex, level, and cause of LLA using the direct method of standardization.

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