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Genesis Rehab Services Gives $100K to Movement Matters Clinic

From left: Dan Hirschfeld, president of GRS; Edward Buckley, MD, professor and vice dean for medical education at Duke; Alice Bell, senior director of clinical services in physical therapy for GRS; Pamela Duncan, PT, PhD, Duke professor and Bette Busch Maniscalco Research Fellow; Jennifer Sidelinker, clinical specialist in physical therapy for GRS; and Special Interest Group Chair Dan Erb, PT, PhD, the director of Duke physical therapy graduate studies. Genesis Rehabilitation Services (GRS)—one of the nation’s leading providers of physical, occupational, and speech therapy services—has donated $100,000 to Duke School of Medicine’s Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program to support its Movement Matters Clinic.

Movement Matters is a free clinic that provides physical therapy rehabilitation to patients suffering from neurological impairments who lack insurance and/or continued rehab services. It also serves as a valuable hands-on learning tool for students in the DPT program.

Second-year Duke Physical Therapy student Jackie Del Giorno, left, works with a patient on a dexterity excercise in the Movement Matters Clinic. “This program meets two important goals,” said Pamela W. Duncan, PhD, PT, FAPTA, FAHA, a professor and Bette Busch Maniscalco Research Fellow in the DPT program. “It meets a community-based need to provide optimized recovery after a neurological disease and to prevent functional decline, and it gives students an opportunity to assess patients and work on complex neurological cases.”

Movement Matters was established as a pilot program, “so we’re grateful for Genesis’s generosity to help keep it going,” Duncan said. She wants to purchase additional equipment and has the long-term goal of sustaining this clinic for the learners and patients. Currently, Movement Matters meets at the Duke Department of Physical and Occupational Therapy in the Lenox-Baker Children’s Hospital.

Of particular interest to GRS and its president Dan Hirschfeld, is that the Movement Matters Clinic promotes neurological rehabilitation as a rewarding and satisfying career option for Duke’s DPT students. Genesis is one of the largest employers in the country of neurological and geriatric physical therapists.

“The Movement Matters Clinic will enable us to make substantial contributions to current research and best practices in the field of geriatric rehabilitation,” Hirschfeld says. “We are excited about this opportunity to partner with Duke’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program and impact practitioners and patients in the community.”

According to several current DPT students, involvement in Movement Matters has inspired them to rethink their career options in favor of working with individuals with neurological disease and the elderly.

“I originally went into physical therapy to be on the orthopedics side,” says DPT second-year student Angela Spontelli, “but this really has sparked an interest in me to work with this population. I see them for who they were 20 or 30 years ago and physical therapy goes a long way to improving their quality of life.”

Adds Jackie Del Giorno, also a second-year DPT student: “Treating a torn ACL is important for getting an athlete back into top form, but there is a subset of patients who are in need of help to return them to basic function.  I am intrigued by the challenging patients and the ability to learn from them.”

- Jim Rogalski