The REA Foundation contributes $41,000 to Dr. Stéphanie Jean’s fellowship.

An initiative to improve care for amputees and serious burn victims.

The REA Foundation contributed $41,000 to Dr. Stéphanie Jean’s fellowship. Her training will enable the Institut universitaire sur la réadaptation en déficience physique de Montreal to offer the most advanced rehabilitation care to amputees and severe burn victims in Quebec. With this contribution, Dr. Jean will become the first physician in Quebec to offer such highly specialized care in this area.

Her one-year fellowshipwill take place at the advanced care hospitalSunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and St. John’s Rehab. These Toronto institutions are cutting-edge reference and expertise centres in amputation and severe burns.

Dr. Jean will also pursue her learning at University of Toronto’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Even more advanced expertise

The objective of this collaboration/training within interdisciplinary teams that bring together occupational therapists, physiotherapists, surgeons, prosthetists and several other specialists is to have the best expertise in Canada address key problems, including:

• Pain
• Scars, contractures and wounds
• Adjustment to prostheses and ortheses (to encourage walking and autonomy)
• Adjustment disorders and mental health
• Etc.

These skills will be applicable in different care contexts, including immediate, short- and medium-term post-trauma rehabilitation as well as long-term outpatient follow-up.

Dr. Jean will play a role in the rehabilitation of patients who have sustained a major amputation, right from the time of admission to the rehabilitation centre. She will also provide follow-up after their return home, with the goal of encouraging family and community integration. Moreover, she will be active in the rehabilitation of patients from the time they arrive at the hospital’s major burns unit to their discharge. She will also ensure follow-up at their outpatient clinic appointments.

For the benefit of Quebec patients

“The care model in Quebec is similar to the one in Ontario,” said Dr. Jean. “So the knowledge I acquire will be completely transferrable and applicable to Quebecers in need and will enable them to access the best expertise currently available.”

A native of Quebec, Dr. Stéphanie Jean, specialized in physical medicine and rehabilitation (physiatry), studied medicine at Université de Montréal, completing her degree in 2016. Driven by her passion for musculoskeletal problems and the complexity of neurological and musculoskeletal rehabilitation, she studied this specialty at Université de Montréal and received her diploma in 2021. Dr. Jean also earned a Master’s of Biomedical Sciences from Université de Montréal. Her thesis was on assessment and the capacity to quickly restore functional walking in the first days following a traumatic spinal cord injury.