I've been fortunate over the past two years to have very few life-related interruptions in my attempts to excel at this whole ''PT'' thing. However last weekend, right before the start of finals week, I received news that my grandfather passed away. The last week has been a complete whirlwind, and obviously final exams and presentations took a ...

This weekend I taught a continuing education course with three other therapists. It took well over a year for us to organize the content, create the handouts and visual displays and market the course to get as many participants as possible. It was a fun process to figure out the best way to engage the participants and relay the most important ...

Anyone who reads my blog with regularity knows the last year has been a struggle for me. I lost my beloved job. I was fired for being ethical. I encountered more than my share of unethical and self-serving people. During all of that, I hung on and kept going to work. Every so often I made a difference to someone, which kept me going. For the ...

I've read about social security running out of money, reduced reimbursement rates, a decrease in the number of qualified providers, quicker discharges and supposedly better recovery after surgery. Where does this leave everyone? Social security has to be there to provide care for the blind and disabled; a reduction in reimbursements will always ...

During my first clinical rotation as a student (which was a short, four-week orientation), my clinical instructor often gave me the task of finding research articles or handouts to give our patients. I distinctly remember working with one patient who had Parkinson's disease. After one of our sessions, we went over an article on Parkinson's ...

Now that I'm home from CSM, I've had an opportunity to process all of the information. Most of the presentations were excellent. Those that weren't purely theoretical had a common theme. We have to maximize what we do because we're spending less and less time with patients. We have less time to spend because there isn't money to pay for our ...

The following post was written by ADVANCE guest blogger Brian Knutsen, OTR/L, CHT, president of Buzzards Bay Hand Therapy LLC, located in Marion and Lexington, MA. SAN DIEGO -- In the ''Assessment of Upper Extremity Impairment, Function, and Activity Following Stroke'' session at CSM, Catherine E. Lang, PT, PhD, shared the foundations for ...

SAN DIEGO -- Just like my fellow ADVANCE blogger Lauren, I'll be attending the APTA Combined Sections Meeting in San Diego. CSM happens this week so I'm already in my hotel. I've registered and picked up my materials. I attended my pre-conference workshop on item writing. I'm ready for things to begin. Unlike most of my fellow therapists, the ...

I've been in my new job nearly four months now. It's going rather well and I like the work that I'm doing. I start traveling fairly extensively starting today. That being said, I'm missing the patient contact. My partner asked me, ''What do you love doing?'' I responded that I've actually become passionate about falls prevention in older adults. ...

I've been pretty busy at work as of late. Our company is expanding from just New York City to the entire state of New York by the end of next year. That's a lot of training and education to be done. It is also uncharted territory as we adapt our approach to different populations and demographics, while recruiting new providers to meet the needs of ...