Faculty Spotlight: Euson Yeung

Euson Yeung, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, spent years working as a physiotherapist but when he started volunteering as a group facilitator for physical therapy students, he discovered his passion for teaching.

Since joining the department in 2004, Euson has received multiple awards recognizing his excellence in education and mentorship including the Department of PT Exceptional Achievement award (Education, Practitioner), University of Toronto Wightman-Berris Academy Individual Teaching award, and the Canadian Physiotherapy Association (CPA) Mentorship award. 

Euson shares his journey to becoming a physical therapist and teacher, and how he thinks the field will evolve in the coming years.

What inspired you to become a physical therapist?

I always liked the biological sciences, especially anatomy and movement science, as well as sports, so that’s what got me into physical therapy. When I started school, the sport I liked to watch was baseball and since then I’ve gotten into other sports. I always enjoyed learning about anatomy and physical therapy was a good way to apply that knowledge.

How did you first become involved in teaching, and what do you enjoy most about working with students?

How I got into teaching was through volunteering at McMaster University in their clinical skills labs and facilitating small groups. That piqued my interest in education. I eventually went back to school to complete an M.Ed. and that helped me gain more in-depth strategies for supporting students and helping to develop their thinking to lead them to their own discoveries instead of giving them the answers right away. Helping students with those ‘aha!’ moments – when they make connections between pieces of knowledge and they start to put things together – that’s what confirms my passion for teaching.

What courses do you teach and what do you hope students will learn from your classes?

I teach the second-year musculoskeletal course and I help a bit with the first-year musculoskeletal course. I hope students in my classes will learn the skill of thinking, which leads to better, more efficient and more effective physical therapy. Critical thinking skills will set them up for success in the long run because that’s something that they’ll need for the rest of their career.

How do you see the field of physical therapy evolving in the next ten years?

I think there's a lot of opportunity for innovative ways to practice. So doing things a bit differently, not just for the sake of being different, but for the sake of better outcomes for our patients and health care system. That requires us to develop students that are creative in the way they think, more critical in the way they think – thinking about other perspectives, multiple perspectives.

Part of what I try to do in my course is bring up issues related to equity, diversity and inclusion. In the cases we discuss, we bring up issues that are unique to marginalized populations and how we can support better access to care for them. We have a lot of issues in our health care system that need addressing and so that kind of thinking will lead to solutions that have never been thought about before.

When you are not busy teaching the next generation of physical therapists, what do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I love spending time with my family and doing something active outside. I like running, so that's how I destress. In the winter we do a lot of skating and skiing and in the summer, we go bike riding.