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'm a peer reviewer for the Texas continuing education program. I review submissions for neuro, geriatric, acute and general so I get to see a lot what is being proposed for continuing education. Texas has a specific form that must be completed for each course submitted for review. It includes speaker qualifications, specific goals, a statement of ...

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 ...

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 ...

As a member of the neurological section, I receive a monthly electronic newsletter. A few months ago, it included a request for volunteers to work on developing an acute stroke care course. Obviously that caught my attention. I completed the application and included a cover letter explaining the holes in the application and expanding on my ...

Last week, I wrote about my experiences teaching my first CEU course. I mentioned how much work it was but didn't go into details. It took me nearly four months to finish, including two months of working at least an hour or two every night. Now I'm going back and revising the content. I'm beginning to think that is an ongoing process. In the ...

Last week I tried something completely different. I taught CEU courses. Naturally the topic was stroke care. Previously I've done presentations of an hour or two. Once I did a four-hour presentation on gait and hemiparetic gait. In every case, I've had support to fall back on. I had no idea what to expect and was pleasantly surprised. Until I did ...

It's been several months since I was elected as a board member to the Southeast District (SED) of the TPTA. Another meeting is coming up this week. I have nothing to report. That isn't particularly surprising since I only have two responsibilities; the spring and fall student socials. Next month will be different. Meanwhile I've had time to ...

This year I made it to CSM. Everything fell into place. New Orleans is 6 hours from Houston. My facility paid my registration. I found a cheap hotel room close to the convention center. Now that I'm back I'm still working on defining my perceptions and experiences. My attention span gradually decreased as the conference continued. By the last ...

I finally got a chance to review the lectures from PT 2010, the APTA's annual conference. The one given by Carol Jo Tichenor particularly caught my interest. Her topic was ''Clinical Experience, Patient Values Minimized by Evidence-based Movement'' seemed to fly directly into the face of everything the APTA was pushing. In summary, she feels there ...