The Stroke Survivor Boot Camp was held on Aug 15-19, 2011. The Boot Camp provided intensive, guided, targeted activity 6 hours per day for 5 consecutive days for 12 individuals with chronic stroke. The camp was an interdisciplinary, collaborative effort that involved faculty and students from the Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) Department, the Communication Disorders Program (Master’s in Speech Pathology) in the College of Educational Studies, and Psychology. Four participants received intensive speech therapy in the morning, followed by intensive motor retraining in the afternoon; others spent all 6 hours working with the physical therapists and student physical therapists. The Boot Camp was designed, organized, and implemented by Dr. Alison McKenzie, Dr. Jacki Brechter, Dr. Candace Vickers, CCC-SLP, and Darlene Hagge, CCC-SLP, with input from Dr. Connie Shears and Dr. Judy Montgomery. Lily Pagador and Healther Fitzgerald, third-year DPT students, were instrumental in organizing and assisting with the activities, as were several speech therapy students. In addition to graduate students in the Physical Therapy and Communication Disorders program, undergraduate Allison Alonas provided significant input and assistance. Lucy Der-Yeghiaian, OTR/L, Jill Stewart, Ph.D., PT, and Chapman alum Jill See, MPT from Dr. Steven Cramer’s Laboratory at UCI also assisted, as did Nicole Hignojoz, DPT, a member of the PT faculty.

Participants’ responses were overwhelmingly positive. All respondents felt that they benefitted from their participation and asked us to offer the camp on a regular basis. We are currently evaluating the clinical assessments to see if participants made objective functional gains as the result of their participation.