Recent Happenings at the Academy

The Academy has a lot going on right now. Following are some of the things we’re working on:

• One of the new projects for Project Quantum Leap is an O&P Education Summit: “Forecasting the Future.” NCOPE is at the helm of the project. A group of invited participants will be asked to analyze and review the O&P body of knowledge and current O&P core competencies. The goal of the conference is to determine where the O&P profession wants to go in the delivery of quality care and what education model would best get the profession where it needs to be in the future.
• The Academy will distribute three office poster charts to members based on information validated by previously held consensus conferences on plagiocephaly, the diabetic foot and scoliosis. The charts are scheduled to be shown in March at our Annual Meeting.
• The Ohio Chapter’s request to expand its boundaries to include Kentucky, West Virginia and Michigan, which do not have chapters, was approved by the Academy board.

Extended-year membership

The Academy’s membership year runs from July to June. Taking a page from the highly popular “extended-year” dues payment approach offered in 2002, we are currently offering two extended-year payment options to ABC certifees who wish to join the Academy at this point in the year.

Prorated dues are available with the commitment of the following year’s dues. For example, a new member can use his or her credit card to pay prorated dues of $175 for the remainder of the current membership year and then have the credit card billed for $300 in April 2005 for the “extended year,” which ends June 2006.

Or, a new member can choose to be billed immediately for $475 for the same membership period.

When the extended-year payment approach was offered previously, approximately 75 percent of the Academy’s membership took advantage of it. This offer is only available by calling the Academy offices at (703) 836-0788. It is not available online.

Conference renamed

“Prosthetic Foot Ankle Mechanisms” will be the topic of the Academy’s next State-of-the-Science Conference. Donald R. Cummings, CP, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas, will be the chair.

Previously, these clinical standards of practice conferences were known as Consensus Conferences. However, as a result of reviewing conference goals and methodology with experts from the National Institutes of Health last year, we have renamed them State-of-the-Science Conferences.

When a large body of credible objective evidence exists, the task of reaching consensus is relatively straightforward, because evidence-based conclusions can be supported and are likely to withstand scrutiny by clinicians who didn’t attend the conference.

Unfortunately, there are only a limited number of topics in the O&P field where such a body of evidence exists. When there is little or no objective evidence in the literature, subjective clinical experiences are the only available basis for treatment decisions, and the consensus reached reflects the majority opinion of a subset of interested clinicians in attendance.

Conferences of this type result in standards of care that are more likely to be controversial and difficult to defend than when solid evidence exists. But, these are also the very clinical areas in which practicing clinicians most want guidance.

These efforts are best described as State-of-the-Science Conferences, because this sets the expectation that the primary result will be the generation of research questions rather than actual practice guidelines.

Annual Meeting co-located

The Academy’s 2005 Annual Meeting will be co-located with the annual meeting of the Association of Children’s Prosthetic-Orthotic Clinics (ACPOCs) on March 16-19 in Orlando.

One registration fee allows access to practically all of the sessions in both programs. A “family friendly” schedule is planned.

Members of ACPOC include doctors, physical therapists, rehab engineers, practitioners, occupational therapists, nurses and other members of the rehabilitation team.

In addition to the amazing symposia and instructional courses, other educational highlights of the meeting include:

• A two-day technician program;
• Three clinical techniques programs;
• Six professional development sessions;
• Four presentations in the Thranhardt Lecture Series;
• The debut of a new certificate program on “Orthotic Management of the Stroke Patient;”
• Two physicians from the “Management of the Lower-Limb Patient” certificate program;
• Free papers grouped by subject;
• ACPOC’s Hector Kay Lecture, which will be given by Peter Armstrong, M.D., chief of staff of Shriners Hospitals; and
• Many ACPOC sessions.