Congratulations to Dr. Crystal MacKay, West Park Healthcare Centre Scientist, who has received the prestigious 2022 AMS Healthcare Compassion and Artificial Intelligence Fellowship! Dr. MacKay was chosen along with 12 other outstanding individuals from across multiple disciplines to address challenges facing health care.
Last year, Dr. MacKay was awarded the AMS Healthcare Grant, which is funding an ongoing project at West Park studying how patients perceive and experience compassionate care in virtual rehabilitation. This project involves working with members of the amputation rehab team, including Dr. Steven Dilkas, to conduct semi-structured interviews with people who have had amputations.
“We’re doing interviews with them to understand what some of the benefits or challenges are with doing virtual-care visits,” Dr. MacKay says. “What does compassionate care look like when you’re doing it virtually, and what can we learn about how we can optimize rehab consultations in a virtual environment?”
The Fellowship will allow Dr. MacKay to build on her research and help further the integration of digital technology in compassionate care.
It will also allow Dr. MacKay to dedicate time toward another project that evaluates how digital interventions, including virtual peer coaching, education, and wearable devices, can improve physical activity in individuals who have experienced dysvascular lower-limb amputation. She will study the experiences of participants and peers with this digital intervention to optimize compassionate care prior to a future trial of the intervention.
During this Fellowship, West Park Senior Scientist Dr. Dina Brooks will be supervising Dr. MacKay and Dr. Bill Miller, a Professor at UBC with expertise in digital rehab technology, will be mentoring her.
“It’s a great opportunity for me to start this project that I’m really excited about and also be able to collaborate with a supervisor and mentor to help develop some expertise in the area of compassionate care and digital technology,” Dr. MacKay says.