Knowledge is power. The world of academia, regardless of the area of study, should be filled with the visionaries, the thinkers, the people that are prepared to be on the cutting edge of thought in their discipline. Research is important, but integration of the research into practice is perhaps even more so.

Professional education should be no different. Chiropractors, physical therapists, and physicians please take note.

Professional education is defined by accreditation standards. In the physical therapy world, CAPTE – the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education – “grants specialized accreditation status to qualified entry-level education programs for physical therapists and physical therapist assistants.”

Somehow, we have managed to run into an unfortunate and ugly symbiotic yet dysfunctional relationship between research, education and accreditation, and subsequently clinical practice – and our academic and clinical worlds suffer because of it.

Read more...

Who needs fiction? Need a plot line for a movie? Book? Just check out the reality of our world. More often than not, truth is far stranger than fiction.

You could check out some reality TV or, better yet, just turn on the news. It doesn’t get any stranger than that.

So as we go into episode 2 of Rhubarb Ruminations, let’s keep that “truth is stranger than fiction” mantra alive and well. Here are three more news items that just make you say “hmmmm”.

Let’s start with Item number one, which definitely needs to go in the category of “best moment of dramatic irony” in recent news memory. The confessed assassin of Malcolm X Thomas Hagen was released from jail a few weeks ago. I guess with our legal system as it is, that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Go to jail for murder, get out 44 years later on parole or good behavior – or something along those lines. Hold on a second – get out for good behavior? You killed someone! But I digress.

So how does this little snippet of rhubarb become more intriguing?

Read more...

There is oftentimes a very fine line between healthy and dysfunctional relationships. This is no more readily apparent than the relationships between many health care providers and their patients. Health care in many ways has become a highly codependent environment.

What exactly is a codependent relationship? Codependence is formally defined as “of or pertaining to a relationship in which one person is physically or psychologically addicted … and the other person is psychologically dependent on the first in an unhealthy way”. Codependent relationships display a tendency “to behave in overly passive of excessively caretaking ways that negatively impact one’s relationships and quality of life”. These types of relationships can be characterized by any number of traits including denial, low self-esteem, excessive compliance, or control patterns.

Where does all of this enter into the patient-clinician relationship? Sadly, it is an all-too-frequent occurrence.

Read more...

Being “in the moment” is the essence of being present in your world. Or so the Zen masters might tell us. For many, this is an outrageously difficult task. It is elegant in it’s simplicity, yet challenging in it’s deeper meaning.

We’re caught up in the passage of time. Life. Experience. Spirituality. A series of moments, all demanding a description, an expression of the experience. And for many, the more pearls on that necklace, the better.

What amazes me is how we can struggle to simply be in the moment, but we’re bound and determined in the meantime to capture the moment and document it in any way possible. It doesn’t matter if you are an artist, or a scientist. It’s not a left brain or right brain task.

Is it possible to focus so hard on capturing the moment that it becomes impossible to simply experience it? And once you’ve captured that moment, what do you do with it?

Read more...