Our strange Spring blossomed into an equally-strange Summer, and now we’re wondering what Fall has in store for us. Before the leaves start turning, please enjoy this second socially-distant production of the ICORDian community newsletter. In this special back-to-school edition, our guest editors/Work Learn students Rona Herzog and Jocelyn Chan decided to shine the spotlight on the students and trainees of ICORD. All of the articles are about students and/or written by students, along with digital illustrations hand-drawn by SCI Community Resource Centre volunteer Yasi Yaghoub (who is also a student!).
By Rona Herzog We are proud to announce that we have seven fellow ICORDians starting medical school this fall. Given their achievement, we thought it would be fitting for our student issue of the ICORDian to showcase all the students and staff who are going off into this next chapter in their education. Let’s meet them!
Congratulations as well to Moe Saffarzadeh from Dr. Krassioukov’s lab, who had a busy summer getting ready for med school and wasn’t able to get back to us by our deadline. We asked these future med students to tell us a bit more about themselves and their paths towards med school. A big question we had was whether the successful ICORDians had always had med school in their sights. For Alix, it was something she thought about throughout her life, but it wasn’t until she sustained three tibial fractures and underwent three surgeries that she saw the privileged role that physicians play in supporting and guiding individuals throughout challenging and vulnerable times. Alix is most looking forward to applying what she learns in the classroom to interactions with real patients. Adam didn’t consider going into medicine until his second year of university, when he watched a tv show with a main character who was an underachieving high school student turned physician. That was the spark that made Adam reflect on his past experiences, and set him on his path to medicine. Adam is looking forward to the collaborative curriculum and close-knit community that the faculty has to offer. Shera was first intrigued by medicine in her undergraduate degree where she had the opportunity to work with Dr. Laura Sly in pediatric immunology research; however, working in research did not allow her to see all of the improvements she was making in medical outcomes and quality of life of patients. This ultimately made it clear that she wanted to transition to the clinical side of medicine, where she can have the opportunity to build relationships with the people she is helping. Melissa experienced a gradual realization that she wanted to be a doctor that began towards the end of her undergraduate degree. She’s excited about meeting others in the program and the community, as well as having the unique experience of living in different parts of BC through the Northern Medical Program. After Hattie’s transfer from Science to Kinesiology, she began to do some serious self-reflecting about what her values and passions were, and realized that medicine would allow her to continue doing what she loved, and fulfil her longstanding interest in a career in healthcare and education. Hattie is looking forward to the knowledge and skills she will be learning in this chapter of her life, and is extremely excited to meet new peers and mentors throughout med school. Amanda’s decision to apply to medical school was heavily influenced by her early days at ICORD, where she gained a better understanding of how SCI affects nearly every organ All the future med students said that their experiences at ICORD influenced the success of their applications. Similar to Adam, Shera felt her experiences of practicing research first-hand, that is already making an impact in the lives of individuals with SCI, added to the success of her application. Shera built meaningful relationships with the members of Dr. Kwon’s incredible team, and can’t wait to collaborate again with them in the future as a physician. Hattie experienced ICORD as both a volunteer and a supervisor at PARC. This had an enormous impact on her and imparted a newfound appreciation for the uniqueness of the lived human experience, which she thinks definitely contributed to the success of her application. While at PARC, Hattie developed her interpersonal skills and established strong, genuine relationships with a wide variety of people from many different backgrounds. These interpersonal skills will be invaluable as she strives to deliver quality care for people from all walks of life as a healthcare professional. Amanda praised the supportive atmosphere and unique opportunities for trainees at ICORD, which certainly contributed to her successful application. From collaborative opportunities with the SCI community to mentorship from clinicians and scientists, her experiences profoundly affected her as a person, and reaffirmed her decision to pursue medicine, time and time again. UBC Med School started on August 24. Best of luck to these aspiring doctors and all their classmates as they navigate this exceptional school year!
By Jocelyn Chan For her PhD dissertation project, Dr. Emma Smith of ICORD PI Dr. Bill Miller’s lab evaluated the feasibility of novel powered wheelchair skills development program which uses a technology called CoPILOT to enhance training. CoPILOT is a remote control device that allows a trainer to have shared control of the powered wheelchair with a learner during the training process, much like a second steering wheel and brake in a driver training car. Trainers can use CoPILOT technology to keep learners safe, and assist learners with more difficult skills until they become more proficient doing them independently. “In typical powered wheelchair training, the trainer needs to stay quite close to the wheelchair to have access to the joystick in case of emergency. This limits what the trainer is able to do with the learner in terms of training activities, and is risky to the trainer,” explained Emma. “Typical powered wheelchair training also involves trial and error approaches, which may not be ideal if the learner has memory difficulties arising from cognitive loss or a brain injury.” With the CoPILOT program, trainers have the opportunity to use more effective training methods, as they have more control over the learning experience. Early on, trainers use techniques such as demonstration and modeling, which have a very low chance of error. This gives the learner the opportunity to see and feel how the tasks are completed. As the learner progresses in their skills, trainers use techniques which slowly introduce the potential for more error, while still ensuring the learner has successful learning experiences. While error can be useful for learning, particularly for those who have no cognitive impairment, error-minimized approaches have shown promise in teaching skills to people with memory loss. Can CoPILOT benefit people with SCI? “While not everyone with an SCI experiences memory loss, many people with SCI experience brain injuries associated with an accident or injury, and older adults with SCI may have aging related memory loss,” said Emma. “CoPILOT provides an alternative training approach for those individuals to ensure they are able to use powered wheelchair technology effectively. CoPILOT also allows the learner to have a bit more space and independence in the training experience, which some people may prefer. We are also exploring the potential of CoPILOT use for caregivers, which could expand the number of people who would be able to use powered wheelchairs in the community.” While the CoPILOT technology is still a prototype, Dr. Smith and her colleagues are working towards commercialization to make it more accessible to anyone who would like to use it. CoPILOT can be implemented anywhere and the system has already been tested in rehabilitation, residential care, and in the community. Dr. Smith hopes CoPILOT will allow more people to be trained to use powered wheelchairs, especially those who might otherwise have difficulty learning. Watch Emma demonstrate CoPILOT in this short video:
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system in the body. Amanda knows that many challenges lie ahead, but that those challenges are always an opportunity for personal improvement; she is most excited to use this time to grow as a person and eventually come into her own as a physician.
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of her projects involved designing a lower limb exoskeleton for rehabilitation purposes. This work sparked her interest in biomedical device development and led to her current PhD studies with Dr. Van der loos in the CARIS lab at UBC and Dr. Borisoff at ICORD. Her current research focusses on improving the personal autonomy of wheeled mobility assistive device users.
As a PhD candidate, Masoud leads the spine muscle project, focusing on paraspinal muscle properties in patients with adult sagittal deformity and those without it. Frustrating experiences in unstructured classes fostered Masoud’s insistence on providing his students with an overview of the materials that will be taught in a session and how those materials fit in the overall course. He takes teaching very seriously: “Each minute in a class of 120 students is worth 120 minutes, so if a teacher makes a mistake that costs one minute of class time, at the very least, they’ve squandered two hours of student time. This makes me feel highly responsible and motivates me to put as much time and energy as I can into preparing for my class. I try to come up with suitable examples and various strategies for explaining my subject. Then, I simulate the class environment and practice the exact material that I will be teaching. This way, during my actual teaching, I have more control over the lesson’s flow and can concentrate on the other aspects of effective teaching, like being attentive, interactive, and energetic.” What does Masoud like best about being a teaching assistant? “Seeing that smile on my students’ faces when they are eventually able to grasp a challenging concept.” The hardest part? “Justice in marking questions with open answers. However, coming up with a proper rubric makes marking much less challenging.”
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On April 14 of this year, the FDA authorized emergency use of the Lungpacer Diaphragm Pacing Therapy System (DPTS) to assist in weaning patients at high risk of weaning failure, including COVID-19 patients requiring ventilation, and patients being mechanically ventilated for other high-risk conditions such as post-cardiac and post-thoracic surgical procedures and medical ICU patients requiring prolonged ventilation.
The Lungpacer system is designed to rhythmically activate the diaphragm using a temporary, minimally invasive phrenic nerve stimulation catheter that is intravenously inserted. In critically ill patients who require mechanical ventilation the disused diaphragm muscle rapidly atrophies. In patients who become ventilator-dependent, the pacing therapy is expected to rebuild diaphragm muscle strength and endurance, thus facilitating weaning from the ventilator. In addition, the paced diaphragm restores negative pressure ventilation, thereby providing a more physiological respiratory pattern that reduces the levels of positive pressure ventilation and its harmful effects on the lungs.
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Did you know that volunteers at our SCI Community Resource Centre prepare summaries of scientific papers and post them on our SCInfo blog? If you’re interested in what’s going on in SCI research around the world, 
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Available exclusively at Bean Around the World Coffees on the ground floor of the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre.
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Entrepreneurs and innovators: UBC engineering students are making a difference
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