Dr. Helen Razmjou

Alumna Dr. Helen Razmjou, now an Associate Scientist at the Hollard Orthopaedic and Arthritic Centre of the Sunnybrook Research Institute, has been investigating the effect of disability and rehabilitation in musculoskeletal disorders for a number of years. Her research interests include factors that affect disability, response shift (a phenomenon of adaptation to disability), clinical diagnostic tests of the shoulder, and gender related analyses. Her clinical work as an Advanced Practice Physical Therapist involves assessment and management of non-surgical and post-surgical cases of rotator cuff, osteoarthritis and labral pathologies of the shoulder. She has used her clinical expertise and research training to prove the reliability and efficiency of Physical Therapists with extended roles in the assessment and management of patients with shoulder problems.

Commenting about her doctoral training, Dr. Razmjou says, “Completion of the PhD program (2009) and training I received from two renowned researchers in the area of disability, Drs. Aileen Davis & Susan Jaglal at the UHN, and two highly respected orthopaedic surgeons, Drs. Robin Richards & Richard Holtby at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, helped me to better understand the relationships among variables that are influenced by the complex nature of human beings. Who we are as men or women and how we deal with the hardship of the musculoskeletal disease influence how we perceive our health-related quality of life and that has little to do with our true physical limitations”.