2013 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting: Health Professionals In the Spotlight

Dr. Thombs joined the ARHP in 2007, is a member of the editorial board of Arthritis Care & Research, and is a past member of the ARHP Research Committee.

Q: What advice do you have for the next generation of researchers?

A: Find a good mentor. Shop around and ask some good questions when you are looking for a mentor. Ask people where their trainees have published and where they have gone when they were finished.

Q: Any advice for those thinking about a career in research?

A: Collaborate. Sometimes, academia can emphasize going solo and proving you can do it on your own. I think that is an outdated model. People need to expose themselves to as many kinds of different people as they can, with various kinds of expertise. For psychologists like myself, get around epidemiologists, rheumatologists, statisticians, and methodologists, and get as much input as you can.”

Q: What advice do you have for rheumatologists who encounter scleroderma patients?

A: As much as you can, help patients connect with other people with this disease. The Scleroderma Foundation in the U.S. is a tremendous resource, as are other national patient societies. Patients with rare disease often don’t even know other people with the disease and generally don’t have a lot of resources to help them cope.

Dr. Trizuto

ARHP Master Clinician Award

Jennifer Trizuto, MPT

Senior Physical Therapist, Mills-Peninsula Health Services, Arthritis and Osteoporosis Center, San Mateo, Calif.

Background: Trizuto never planned on a career working in rheumatology. She was doing inpatient physical therapy at Mills-Peninsula around 1995 when a supervisor asked her about the Arthritis and Osteoporosis Center staff needing help. She started helping out two days a week and the bug was caught.

“We had weekly rounds where we really focused on the patient as the center of our model, and that is really what hooked me—the team approach,” she says.

Trizuto now serves as the Arthritis and Osteoporosis Center’s program coordinator, teaches the Arthritis Self-Management Class, and runs the center’s support groups for osteoporosis, arthritis, and fibromyalgia.

She has been an active ARHP member since 1995 and has served on multiple committees, including the advocacy committee.

Q: To earn the award of master clinician, what does that mean to you in terms of your career choice?

A: For me, it really means that the passion I’ve had for the past 20 years has really come to life. It finally just made me feel like people value what you do. So it just made me feel a little bit validated that I’ve worked so hard to keep the programs and my passion going.