NMD4C: The Neuromuscular Disease Network for Canada

Read the latest early career blog post, from NMD4C member Samar Muslemani, OT, M.Sc.

Full blog available here!

Excerpt:

“Occupational therapy is where science, creativity, and compassion collide”

This is a quote from Jessica Kensky, a survivor of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and keynote speaker at the 2016 American Occupational Therapy Association welcome ceremony. To me, this quote represents exactly what I love about my profession. Pursuing a PhD allows me to develop these three elements even further.

Samar Muslemani holds a Master’s Degree in Occupational Therapy and has been practicing in Saguenay, Québec since 2018. She is a doctoral student with the University of Sherbrooke. She aims to better understand the functional impacts of cognitive impairments in people living with myotonic dystrophy type 1. She completed a research Master’s Degree in Health Sciences in August 2021. Her project aimed to document independence and social participation of adults living with childhood phenotype of DM1. She received a bursary of the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS), and has assessed patients both in Canada and France as part of her research project. Native from Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, she is interested in offering more support to patients and families with neuromuscular diseases (NMD) in her native region and internationally. Both in her research and clinical practice, she has worked with various NMDs, such as recessive spastic ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay, oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy and Charcot-Marie-Tooth diseases. She is the first author of a practical guideline to support occupational therapists in addressing sexuality with their NMD patients. 

Within the NMD4C, Samar supports the Knowledge Translation team through developing knowledge and skills, defining barriers, and reducing the knowledge-to-action gap by developing various tools including clinical practice guidelines in the NMD field.