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M argo Paterson, PhD OT

Reg. (Ont.) is is delighted to take on the role of executive director of ACOTUP after many years as an academic in the occupational therapy program at the School of Rehabilitation Therapy, Queen’s University. She is a tenured professor and is currently seconded half time as the director of the Office of Interprofessional Education and Practice for the Faculty of Health Sciences. She is cross-appointed to the School of Nursing at Queen’s and the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education Centre at Charles Sturt University in Australia.

After completion of her BscOT degree, Margo worked as an occupational therapist in a variety of settings including rehabilitation and community care in Australia and Canada. She completed her master’s in Community Health and Epidemiology at Queen’s and she did her doctoral work in health sciences at the University of Sydney Australia.

Margo has maintained a strong educational research program with federal and provincial funding. She has 52 peer reviewed publications which are listed at www.rehab.queensu.ca. She has presented at many national and international conferences. She was a co-editor on a textbook published in 2010 with colleagues from around the world entitled

Innovations in Allied Health Fieldwork Education: Critical Appraisal . Her main research contributions have focused on understanding professional/clinical reasoning processes; theory-practice integration to ensure best practice including achievement of excellence and leadership in practice; partnership with consumers/clients as educators; rural and remote education; and collaborative inter-professional education and care.

Her teaching areas include: advanced clinical reasoning; qualitative research methods; interpreting applied research; therapeutic relationships/communication skills; and professional development.

Combining work and travel has always been an interest and has given Margo the opportunity to do educational consulting work on various projects in Russia, Sri Lanka – she is currently participating in a new CIDA funded project in Bangladesh.

Margo has been involved in ACOTUP for many of the past 23 years that she has been at Queen’s in her role as fieldwork co-coordinator as well as chair of the OT program and most recently co-chair of the ACOTUP Education Committee for 2009-2011. From 1995-97, she was a member of the ACOTUP Executive Committee which was a unique hybrid group from three universities (Laval, Queen’s and UBC). Margo has been reducing her workload at Queen’s and is currently working 75 per cent of the time. She will be reducing to 50 per cent in June 2012 so she excited about this new adventure as executive director of ACOTUP.