Assistant professor
Department of Rehabilitation
Faculty of Medicine

Stéphanie Bernard has been an Assistant Professor in the physiotherapy program at Université Laval’s École des sciences de la réadaptation since June 2023. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in physiotherapy from McGill University in 2006, Stéphanie Bernard accumulated several years of clinical experience as a front-line physiotherapist. She then completed a Master of Science degree in Experimental Medicine at Université Laval (2016), where she focused on pelvic floor muscle alterations following radiotherapy treatments. Under the supervision of Professors Hélène Moffet and Linda McLean, she completed a PhD (2021) on telerehabilitation of urinary incontinence in people treated for gynecological cancer. Supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS), she followed this work with a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cancer Rehabilitation Clinic alongside Prof Margaret McNeely at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

In recent years, she has established numerous research collaborations that have led to the acquisition of research funding from competitive organizations such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Alberta Hospital Foundation, and the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance. Today, her work focuses primarily on research into the quality of cancer survivorship: oncology rehabilitation, with a particular focus on pelvic cancers, access to rehabilitation, and the wider applicability of rehabilitation interventions are among the research themes of her program.