Adrienne Witol became a Registered Psychologist in 1996, earning her doctorate in clinical psychology in 1994 and completing a 2 year fellowship at Virginia Medical School/Traumatic Brain Injury Model System, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. After working as the psychological director of inpatient rehabilitation services at Medical College of Virginia Hospitals, she relocated to Canada in 1998.
The last ten years have been focused exclusively on children with cancer and or blood disorders and their families. Most recently, she has developed and leads BrainWorks, a Kids With Cancer Society supported program that works to support the cognitive, educational and emotional support needs of children with cancer, brain tumors and injury and cancer-like conditions.
She has a long-standing interest and passion for the academic and social needs of children. In 2001, she received an Innovation Award for the development of a community based brain injury rehabilitation and school transition project. The BrainWorks program is based on the most successful elements of this early transition program. She also assisted with a national project to help define essential elements to promoting Canadian children with cancers’ return to school. At this point, there are no evidence based guidelines in the US or Canada. For eight years, she served, representing this focus, on the C17 Research committee, a national consortium of health centers researching and working with children and families with cancer and blood disorders. Since 1998, she has also worked at Alberta Health Services providing care to and collaborating on local and multisite projects addressing the academic cognitive and emotional support needs of individuals with medical illnesses or brain injury and their families.
An interest in helping to promote retention of health care staff led her to both consulting and group therapy work with health care professionals addressing compassion fatigue and resilience training. This work has led to several practice changes in the Edmonton pediatric oncology unit.
Her community work has included compassion fatigue support groups, as well as group and individual therapy with persons struggling with infertility, development of programs to help deliver support services to students with late effects due to cancer treatment and multiple caregiver and expressive art conferences.