Good morning, ladies and gentleman. I am here today with Carole Lemire to talk to you about an innovative practice at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières: the multidisciplinary health care clinic.
The multidisciplinary health care clinic is the most recent of the university's clinics. There are also four other clinics. The oldest, the psychology clinic, has been in existence for nearly 25 years. The multidisciplinary clinic opened this past September.
With the opening of this clinic and a desire within the university to promote more of a team approach, a new official committee was formed: the Collectif des cliniques universitaires en santé. This collective brings together all the teaching and administrative representatives of the clinics. They meet once a month to discuss all matters relating to the management of a university clinic.
A university clinic is a place where trainee students provide services to the public, that being the clientele we want to serve, under the constant supervision of qualified people who are recognized by their professional order.
The collective works very hard. There is a real desire for interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. In the last year, the fruit of our joint labours has been really visible. Because we are in the start-up phase, there is still work to be done to reach our cruising speed.
The multidisciplinary health care clinic covers three disciplines: occupational therapy, speech therapy and health care. Ms. Lemire, who is with me today, will talk to you about health care. I am going to talk to you about occupational therapy.
The occupational therapy department was established in September 2011. The clientele we serve is made up of children who come from early childhood centres, schools and social pediatrics. The department wanted to offer services to a clientele that is underserved by the public system.
This clientele is underserved because often, the people it is composed of do not use the public services, or because the problems the children are experiencing are not important enough, or high enough priority, to be at the top of the waiting lists. By definition, these are children who were not receiving services, or at least the waiting time to get services was a little longer. That was an asset for us, because our students are less experienced and so they are able to offer these kinds of services.
In occupational therapy, we have undergraduate and graduate students who are working with these children, but in the next few years an adult clientele will also be taken on.
For speech therapy, we serve a clientele composed of people of all ages who are having specific problems such as stuttering, aphasia and various difficulties with spoken and written language. These services are offered by master's level students. We also offer services in schools, in childcare centres and directly to parents who request our services.
I will conclude my presentation by adding that at the clinic, we have a governance committee composed of all the clinical directors, who are the people from the departments concerned who oversee the clinic from the academic and pedagogical perspectives. The administrative directors of the multidisciplinary health care clinic, like myself, also sit on the committee. The governance committee meets about once a month. We ensure that the clinics are operating properly.
I should also note that, in general, the professional orders visit the clinic when they come to the university in connection with accrediting its programs, and so the clinic is part of the accreditation process.
I will now yield the floor to Ms. Lemire.