University of Guelph-Humber

Kinesiology Student Gabriella Denino

When Gabriella Denino started the University of Guelph-Humber’s Kinesiology program in 2013, she knew exactly what she wanted to do. With a lifelong interest in sports, she wanted to work with top-flight athletes, helping them recover after injuries so they could get back in the game. It wasn’t until she took a second-year course on diabetes education that she started to change her mind.

“It seems like we’re always helping people after they’re already hurt,” Gabriella says. “I wondered why we weren’t doing more preventative care. The more I learned about it, the more I developed a passion for intervening before a problem gets out of hand.”

That newfound passion meant that when Gabriella was searching for her fourth-year field placement, she found the perfect fit in a place she didn’t expect. For the fall semester, Gabriella is spending two days a week shadowing a registered kinesiologist working at Humber River Hospital’s bariatric clinic. She’s working with a health team that includes a nurse, a dietician and social worker to run a program for people with health issues related to their weight, like diabetes or hypertension. The program is often used by people who want an alternative to bariatric surgery, such as a gastric bypass.

“It’s about giving people the tools to manage their own weight loss,” Gabriella says. “We teach them about proper portion control, how often to exercise, what exercises they should do and more.”

Along with helping conduct intake assessments and create exercise plans for the program’s patients, Gabriella is working with the kinesiologist to run group skill-building and exercise classes. With her growing interest in preventative care, Gabriella says taking part in this placement is giving her a preview of what it’s like to work in the field.

“This is giving me the tools to navigate where I want to go. I want to become a registered kinesiologist and what better way to learn the skills of the field than by seeing it firsthand?” she says. “I try to treat it like a first job, one where any mistakes can turn into teaching moments, so I’m always asking a lot of questions.”

Along with getting insight into the responsibilities and challenges facing kinesiologists, Gabriella says she’s building the soft skills required for the job too. Along with her physiological know-how, she’s learning how best to work with someone as you try to improve their health.

“You can’t just tell someone how to fix their problems. You need to sympathize with them, hear their story and get to their level to help build them up,” Gabriella says.

It’s those same skills that Gabriella says lead to the work’s greatest rewards too. A few weeks into her placement, she was at the follow-up meeting of a man who had gone through the hospital’s six-month program. With charts in hand, Gabriella took his final health measurements and let him know the progress he’d made.

“The pure excitement and joy on his face was so rewarding,” she says. “This was something he did, there was help along the way, but his hard work got him there. To be able to tell him that he’d succeeded and see his reaction; it was an honour that I got to do it.

Learn more about field placements at the University of Guelph-Humber.

Learn more about Kinesiology at the University of Guelph-Humber.