December 4, 2008
Harborview burn rehab manager wins international award
By Steve Butler
News & Community Relations
When Merilyn Moore started her career as a physical therapist in burns at Australia’s Royal Brisbane Hospital in 1980, she recognized that “staying ahead of the game” in the highly specialized field of burn injury rehabilitation required an international perspective. She began traveling to conferences as far away as Belfast and Tokyo to learn from leading experts and soon after presented papers at the international burn society conference in Melbourne.
In 1986, the native Australian moved to the United States when she was recruited by the Shriners Burns Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas. Seven years later, she became a physical therapist at the UW Medicine Burn Center at Harborview, where she currently serves as manager of the Burn/Plastics Clinic and Rehabilitation Therapies.
Moore’s 28-year career journey reached a high point in September when the International Society for Burn Injuries named her as the first recipient of its Andre Zagame Outstanding OT/PT Rehabilitation Specialist Award. With this award, Moore was recognized for her significant contributions to the rehabilitation of patients with burn injuries through clinical practice, clinical teaching and community service. “What makes the award even more special,” she said, “was being nominated by my colleagues, the burn physicians and staff at Harborview.”
As a practitioner, mentor, teacher, researcher and presenter, Moore has demonstrated that rehabilitation specialists play a vital role in educating burn patients and improving outcomes. Especially, as practiced at Harborview, an aggressive team approach – combining therapy to restore flexibility and mobility with reconstructive surgery – offers patients the best hope for recovery and achieving personal goals.
Since burn injury rehabilitation is difficult and painful for patients, Moore maintains her professional optimism with the knowledge that many patients go on to have rewarding lives beyond their initial expectations. They form new relationships, start careers, get married and have children. This indomitable spirit is exemplified by an 11-year-old boy, who was burned over 98 percent of his body, had facial disfigurement, and needed partial amputations of both arms and legs. Now, in his late twenties, he lives independently, has a good job in computer technology and travelled last year to a world congress for burn survivors, where he reconnected with Moore through Harborview colleagues in attendance.
Creating hope is also a central aspect of Moore’s personal life. When her husband was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1994, she recognized the need for Washington to have a local chapter of the ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) Association. Her work led to the formation of the Evergreen Chapter, which provides support to patients and caregivers in Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana in dealing with this progressively debilitating disease.
Moore and her husband are currently participating in a World Relief project to help resettle families from Bhutan, who have spent the past 18 years in refugee camps run by the United Nations in Nepal. When their assigned family arrived in September to spend 10 days in her home, the parents and two children looked pale and gaunt from their camp experience and long journey.
Two months later, the parents and two children are doing much better. They have been reunited with relatives who arrived earlier in Seattle and are beginning to make a new home. “Despite cultural and language barriers,” Moore says, “their lives are now full of hope.”
