Inspired

The Annual Conference was very inspirational, along with the House of Delegates (HoD). I served as an usher for both which meant sitting through lectures and collecting evaluation forms for general programming and running messages from state to state in the HoD. The lectures were interesting, I went to one on ACL injuries, CAPTE on-site reviewers, the Maley lecture (this years was about patient-centered care), designing an effective clinical experience, and the McMillan lecture. The McMillan lecture given by Dr. Stanley Paris (pictured) was very idealistic and spoke about where PT should be. He spoke of 10 main points that all rang true and overall emphasized autonomy. Dr. Paris has an amazing bio and can almost single-handedly be thanked for bringing spinal manipulation into the world of PT.

The point that was most dear to my heart at this time as a student was to make a standard for pre-requisites. Currently schools many of the PT schools have wide gaps in pre-reqs that are not only confusing but irritating and can be a deterrent to the application process. Sometimes there are different levels of BIO required, or different statistic courses, and almost every school has a different amount of volunteer hours required (Northeastern as I recall asks for 1,000!). To be safe of course every student can take every course and have thousands of volunteer hours, but is this really worth the time and energy. I was told in Canada there are schools without any pre-reqs, which would be interesting in the USA...


Numerous issues came up throughout my time in Orlando that will change the world of PT for years to come. For instance, Direct Access passed in the Assembly and Senate in NY (Just waiting for the Governor before it's official.

Also, there is a great debate on the idea of grandfathering in the Doctor title into PT to bring our profession forward. Unfortunately only 10% of currently practicing PT's have earned a Doctoral degree in PT and 50% have only earned a Bachelors. Obviously the degree level compared to years of experience is not always a gauranteed means of being a better PT, but this is a debate that will rage on as we move forward as a profession and hopefully more and more PT's can get their transitional-DPT.

But back to NY and reality for a second... I have to go work for my mothers accounting business and get her some flowers for her birthday, have to find a piece of paper that means a few extra points in one class, hmmm... and I have to finish writing my statement to apply for the Student Assembly.

Thanks to everyone who was just great in Orlando, I wish I could take you all home with me.
Nothing but love.