For more than a decade, Waterloo co-op students have brought curiosity, compassion and leading-edge skills to Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Canada’s largest children’s rehabilitation hospital. Each term, students from Pharmacy, Computer Science and beyond are embedded in teams delivering world-class care and transformational research for children and youth with disabilities and medical complexity — and their contributions leave a lasting impact.
For Nathan Ho, director of pharmacy services, the partnership is essential to the hospital’s mission. “Waterloo students make a significant contribution by providing collaborative, patient-centred medication therapy management,” Ho says. “They also bring forward new ideas that lead to impactful quality and safety improvement projects. The impact continues long after their work terms end."
Over the past 13 years, Holland Bloorview has hired one Waterloo co-op student every year — and many come full circle. Since 2017, four former co-op students have returned to the hospital as clinical pharmacists, shaping care for future patients and mentoring new Waterloo students entering the field.