Welcome to 2012!  We hope that your year has started well. Thank-you to all of our members who have completed the surveys that we emailed over the past 2 months.  The results of our latest survey regarding our future involvement with CPA Congress, Symposium, or a combination thereof will be available shortly. Highlights of the results of our first survey in November 2011 revealed the following: slight majority voted to resume our old format of holding an orthopaedic symposium; overwhelming majority would like to see a full day of orthopaedic programming pre-or-post CPA Congress….as you can see here, our situation is not resolved yet.  There are mixed opinions amongst the membership as to what direction the division should be heading with respect to our annual educational programming.  This is why we sent out a second, more pointed, survey.  As an executive, we want to solicit the opinion of our valued members in order to make an informed and democratic decision.  Hopefully the results of the second survey and discussions with CPA will assist us in doing that.  We have the best interests of our members in mind.

Along the lines of education, two major events are coming up in 2012: CPA Congress in sunny Saskatoon (May 24-27) and the IFOMPT conference in Quebec City (September 30-October 5).  Both events promise to offer excellent programming and international representation. In collaboration with the Pain Science Division, we will be hosting a CPA teleconference in April.  The topic will cover a clinically application discussion on identifying pain mechanisms and their management in physiotherapy clinical practice.  Our esteemed presenters are: Dr. Pamela Barton, physiatrist and pain expert, along with Ms. Joyce Cote, pharmacist.  This multidisciplinary education session will be one that you will not want to miss!

We have been examining the utility of our division subscription to JOSPT.  We want to ensure that our membership is getting the ‘bang for their buck’, so to speak, and that this subscription is a valued service to our membership.  It is an excellent journal for orthopaedic physiotherapists, but we also realize that access to a database offering multiple journals would also be beneficial.  Although we have put a lot of effort into solving this issue, but we have not found an alternative resource that would benefit our membership as of yet.  We will keep researching access to various databases offering full-text access.  Currently the expense to access such databases is quite high and some of the databases we examined did not offer clinically relevant journals.  We will keep you informed as new offers arise. 

Well as you can see, it has been a busy, yet inspirational start to 2012!  Enjoy this issue of the ODR and we hope that it offers you valuable insight into your clinical practice and professional development.

On behalf of the National Executive and the Education Committee, I wish you all the best in your endeavors for 2012.

Regards,

 

Geoff Schneider

Chair - Orthopaedic Division of the CPA