Arthritis At Home 311 – Advanced physiotherapist practitioner in juvenile idiopathic arthritis care

In this episode of Arthritis At Home, we are sharing the #CRArthritis interview with Ms. Julie Herrington, an Advanced Physiotherapist Practitioner with ACPAC (Advanced Clinical Practitioner in Arthritis Care) training working with the pediatric and young adult rheumatology teams at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. Julie has been the ACPAC Special Interest Group chair for the past two years and has been strongly advocating for the role of an ACPAC Clinician to fill gaps in our health care system.

In her discussion with Cheryl, she shares highlights from her two posters. The first poster looked at an advanced physiotherapist practitioner’s level of safety performing juvenile idiopathic arthritis care. They compared quality and standards of care, safety, and performance indicators between patients receiving advanced physiotherapist practitioner care with those in the PR-COIN Registry. PR-COIN is a collaborative community where patients, parents, clinicians, and researchers work together to improve the health and care of children and youth with rheumatic conditions. The study found that those in the first group received very similar level of care than those in the second group – this would hopefully help alleviate the stress on healthcare team members in rheumatology care.

The second poster highlights parents and teens’ feedback about their satisfaction with the advanced physiotherapist practitioner model of care in pediatric rheumatology. The study found that satisfaction level is high. The parents and teens felt that appointments were thorough and valuable.

Additional learning resources