Marguerite Merey
Profile of Marguerite Merey
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The Registered Massage Therapists’ Association of Ontario has teamed up with the West Toronto Community Health Services (WTCHS) to launch a pilot program to verify the benefits of integrating massage therapy into primary care. WTCHS provides community mental health and addictions services with supportive housing, community support services for seniors and persons with disabilities, home care, and inter-professional primary health care services within a single agency, and massage therapy is now a valued part of that team.
The feedback from patients about the inclusion of massage therapy in this program has been overwhelmingly positive. Patients appreciated the opportunity to access massage therapy care when they may not have previously had access and felt that it was beneficial to their health.
Marguerite Merey, one of the RMTs who is part of the pilot project at WTCHS has spoken to the RMTAO about her experience, and why she thinks it’s essential for RMTs to work in primary care environments.
Marguerite noticed some positive differences in her work at WTCHS as compared to massage therapy work elsewhere. She finds that there is much more time for a more comprehensive assessment, as it is part of the expectation in primary care. Since the number of sessions with each patient is limited, she has focused on providing patients with the tools they need to help better manage their pain and achieve their goals. She has found that it was her willingness to learn and to adjust her approach to help her patients.
“ It has been helpful to have an attitude of openness for this position,” Marguerite said. “Open to learning about and meeting other team members, open to learning new skills, being open to change, and being open-minded working with a diverse and sometimes complex client population.”
She has found that this position has helped her to be better able to treat patients with chronic pain, by both deepening her understanding of chronic pain and having access to tools to help patients manage and understand their chronic pain. She felt the team environment was essential in being able to help patients.
“An interdisciplinary team can play a pivotal role in providing care for the patient as it can be challenging to practice as a solo practitioner and expect the client to reach their goals,” Marguerite said.
The inclusion of Massage Therapy in WTCHS has been focused on improving patient outcomes, and Marguerite feels that having massage therapy in these types of programs is essential to ensure that more patients are able to benefit from massage therapy care. Based on her experiences so far, massage therapy has been a welcome positive addition for patients.
“By offering Massage Therapy to no cost to the patient it removes a huge barrier to access,” Marguerite said, “In addition, having Massage Therapy as a treatment option patients may achieve their goals or reduce their pain quicker by providing a supplemental treatment option alongside their current health care services.”
Massage therapy has been a good fit so far with the other health care services that are offered at WTCHS. Although there were challenges based on the treatment environment to overcome, Marguerite feels that this pilot program allows massage therapy to access a valuable addition to the other healthcare they were already receiving.
“Massage Therapy plays an important role by providing the client time - time to be heard and to be present thus leading to a greater relationship with and sense of their bodies,” Marguerite said.
Having multiple ways to communicate and being part of a team has helped facilitate referrals and provide necessary background. The patients that have experienced massage therapy through that program have expressed what a good experience it has been, and we expect many more patients will be helped. The RMTAO looks forward to providing our members further updates about the Pilot Program.