A Physical Therapist Explains Why It’s Important to Choose the Right Con-Ed Path
by Joel Gaines | May 30, 2017 | Blog
Kasey Miller DPT, COMT shares why IAOM-US is the best choice for your continuing education
I’d like to share with you my story and how much the IAOM-US has helped. I am a recent graduate from Kansas University Medical School and have only been out for 1 year (graduated in 2016). Prior to getting exposed to the IAOM systematic approach, I felt that I was lost. I felt that I learned a ton of information in school but did not know exactly how to use it.
I have always known that I wanted to be an outpatient physical therapy but was just so overwhelmed by the lack of structure to the approach that school took which had me questioning whether to complete physical therapy school or shift careers all together.
I got exposed to the IAOM through Esteban, as he and a few of his colleagues came to our school and did a 45 minute lecture on the cervical spine. It was during this lecture, that I realized I learned more in 45 minutes about the cervical spine than I did during my semester long spine course. Once I saw that there was a more thorough approach to treating patients, I was hooked on the IAOM.
I then signed up to do one of my last internships at Modern Physical Therapy in Kansas City, Missouri, which is an IAOM based clinic. During these 9 weeks, I learned more than I did throughout my whole educational experience at school.
Not only does the IAOM-US approach teach you manual techniques, but it also teaches you when to use them and which patients would benefit from them. One aspect of the IAOM that you will continue to see/hear if you decide to pursue the COMT through us, is that we teach how to diagnose specific pain generators. Too often you see therapist in the clinic treat based off dysfunctions. That works great for acute patients but what about those patients who have recurring problems?
It is vital to the patients success that you can figure out what specifically is causing the pain in order to further understand how you can get that pain to go away. Along with the specific pain generators, the IAOM teaches you a systematic algorithm to help you approach every evaluation that you do in the clinic. I found this algorithm to be extremely helpful and truly helps dictate how you create your plan of care. By doing every examination the same, it teaches you the different patterns that every pain generator has, and if you know the patterns, then this allows you to know how to treat your patients more effectively and more efficiently.
Prior to pursuing the COMT through the IAOM, I took several other classes with different CE groups and can say that I truly feel that IAOM has the most complete package.
Feel free to ask me any other questions as I would love to help because I was recently in the same spot as you… trying to further my education but did not know which direction to go.
