Call to the College from Team Member Leads to Wake-up Call for Local Physio

Use of Support Personnel a Growing Concern

There are phone calls. And then there are wake-up calls. One day last summer, Marcel Beajok got both.  A registered physiotherapist with the College of Physiotherapists of Ontario since 1988, Marcel recalls he was sitting at his kitchen table, talking with his wife about their children’s plans to graduate from local universities in the spring when the phone rang.

“It was the College,” says Marcel. “They told me someone had reported that they had concerns about the work I had assigned to a physiotherapist support person on my team at the Beauford Long-Term Care Facility and that it was serious. I was surprised and embarrassed, but deep down I knew it was coming and that it was time to fess up.”

For several years prior to receiving the call from the College, Marcel had been playing both ends against the middle. With two children in university, both of them living away from home, he had been trying to make ends meet by taking on extra work, but it was more than he could manage on his own.

During his extended absences from Beauford to attend to matters at other clinics, Marcel assigned more and more work to David Onslow, a support person and recent graduate from a local College. Weeks would go by without Marcel seeing his patients or talking to David.

Mr. Onslow finally decided to contact the College when he felt that Marcel was potentially putting everyone on his team at Beauford at risk.

“I felt it was unprofessional not to conduct re-assessments, to take charts with him when he left, but most of all to not communicate with me and the rest of the team,” said Mr. Onslow. “It wasn’t fair to the patients. As a new grad, assigning me to situations I knew were questionable was really stressful. I’m not a whistle-blower by any means, but I simply wasn’t prepared or experienced enough to deal with the situations I found myself in.”

Otherwise level-headed and meticulous when it came to maintaining his records and upgrading his credentials, Marcel admits to getting in over his head.“In hindsight, I know my decision was crazy. But I thought I could manage it and I told myself it was just temporary. It was a way to help my children succeed, that’s the way I saw it.” 

In 2011, the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) at the College reviewed Marcel’s case. The facts were clear. Marcel had certainly failed to meet the expectations in the standards. They deliberated at length about the appropriate College response. In light of his previous excellent track-record, the Committee decided to require Marcel to participate in a Specified Continuing Education and Remediation Program (SCERP) and to attend the College to be cautioned in person by the ICRC. In addition, the ICRC required Marcel to complete a review of the relevant College standards, guides and e-learning modules, and to pay for, and complete, courses in record keeping, business practices and ethics. The College is also overseeing onsite practice assessments and practice enhancement coaching with Marcel until 2014.

“I messed up and I completely understand why the College took the position it did,” said Marcel. “I was so focused on putting my interests first that I lost sight of the reason why I became a physio in the first place, which was to help my clients. My behaviour was unbecoming for a profession that I have so much respect for.”

At the time of writing, Marcel continues to work at the Beauford Long-Term Care Facility and is in his second year of practice enhancement coaching.