Hello from PABC to all our wonderful public practice members. Do you know who your ambassadors are? This new segment, Meet your Ambassadors!, will highlight a different public practice PT serving as an ambassador in each newsletter, for you to better understand the members who work with PABC to help us better serve you.
Ambassadors bridge a vital connection between PABC and your health facilities and workplaces. At PABC, we highly value the open communication between us and our public practice members, and the ambassadors make that happen seamlessly.
To select our first featured ambassador, long-time PABC member Dora Foote seemed like a perfect choice. Dora is the Community Physio and Allied Health PPL for Williams Lake and 100 Mile House and is an active and engaged ambassador.
Committed to public health, Dora has chosen to spend almost her entire career in the sphere with a short stint in private practice. We reached out to Dora to learn more about her and the work she does.
Dora knew she wanted to become a physio at the age of 14, and says the experience of working in environments such as Shaughnessy Hospital (now a part of B.C. Women’s Hospital and Health Centre) and the mentorship she received there under Janet Hopkins as being extremely formative and inspiring. Additionally, she credits working with PABC member Margaret Waring over the years: “We went through some very interesting experiences together and came out much stronger for that,” she says of her many years working alongside Margaret.
With decades of experience working as a public practice physio, Dora is beginning to plan for her retirement and achieving some last career goals. “I want to leave with those tasks completed so that my team will strongly move forward and welcome new changes,” she says. When asked about the future of public practice physiotherapy, she says she has some worries about the “increasing creep of bureaucracy” that affects some frontline staff and can reduce critical face-to-face time with patients.
She is close to retirement and when asked how she intends to spend her free time, her response was: “I enjoy reading, walking, being in nature, yoga, and taking courses on how our minds work and how we think.” It looks like Dora still plans to keep busy learning well into retirement! PABC thanks Dora for her years of service and many contributions as an active member and ambassador. We look forward to Dora finding new ways to stay involved with PABC after retirement!