Hi, my name is Bill Boisenalt,
and on behalf of the
Academy of Orthopedic Physical Therapy,
I want to thank you and
welcome you as we continue
to celebrate the first 50
years of the Academy.
2024 marks the 50th birthday,
which is a big birthday for
any organization, any business,
and the Academy has
undertaken a number of
activities to honor the past,
celebrate the past, including
creating,
developing an historical timeline
of key events that occurred
over these previous years.
The purpose of these Couch
Conversations has been to
highlight the events that
not only helped shape the academy,
but also helped shape the
profession overall.
And we've had six such
conversations to date.
Today,
number seven will be the final Couch
Conversation looking back at the past.
And it is very,
very fitting that we are
joined today by Dr. Stanley
Parris in this Seventh and
Final Couch Conversation.
Dr. Parris is the founding
father of the Academy.
He spearheaded the Academy formation,
which we will hear took six
or seven years to accomplish.
Dr. Parris helped guide it
through the APA House of
Delegates approval process,
getting a section approval at that time.
And subsequently,
he was elected as the first
president of the Academy.
And after finishing his terms,
served numerous official
and unofficial roles within the Academy.
In recognition of his contributions,
the section created the
Paris Distinguished Service Award.
And Stanley was the first
recipient to that award in 1990.
So Stanley, it is a pleasure.
Thank you for joining us today.
Well, thank you, Bill, for the invitation.
It's a pleasure to be alive
these 50 years and to be
able to share some thoughts with you.
But this great orthopedic section,
as you know,
you're now using the term academy.
Right, right.
By the way,
I don't think I was the first president.
I was the first chairman.
Back then we used the term chairman.
President came later.
And part of that was the
thinking that if you are
running an organization,
you should be the chairman,
whereas presidents get a
little bit dictatorial at times.
So I was very happy with the
title of chairman,
but now I'm considered a past president.
That's okay.
It's a good historical footnote.
That's perfect.
You know, Stanley,
today the Academy has over
16,300 members.
It has a permanent office
building in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
It has seven staff.
It has JOSPT,
which really is three journals,
plus it has its magazine.
And the Academy has
contributed $1.5 million to
the Foundation for Physical
Therapy Research.
In that first year, it had 740 members.
There was no office building.
There was no staff.
In fact,
I think you mentioned to me at
some point along the way
that the section office
really was a closet in your
home that contained boxes
filled with papers.
I mean, those early days,
did you ever imagine the
academy would evolve to
where it is today?
No,
and I didn't imagine that physical
therapy would be such a
large profession as it is
today with the level of
acceptance that it has.
It's higher level of autonomy than ever.
But I worked for it as well
as everyone else because we
believed that in the best
interest of the patient,
we needed clinical
specialization to advance
physical therapy, to advance its autonomy,
and so that we could better
serve the public.
And we knew we had to
wrestle with the medical
profession to gain a number
of those rights.
And so I imagined it, yes,
but did I think it would happen?
don't know but it has and
I'm very pleased with where
we are today in many
respects not all yeah yeah
so we'll go you should be
very proud of what was
created and the impact it
has had um so you mentioned
some of the driving forces
or some of the issues that
led to the creation of the
section itself were there
any other driving forces
besides those that you just mentioned
Well,
just take a minute or two to talk
about what physical therapy
was like in the 1960s when
we started to work to get
the section formed in 1974.
Physical therapy depended on
a medical referral complete
with a diagnosis and a prescription.
Doctors, as you know,
most of them don't know the
first thing about physical
therapy or what it is we can do.
And the musculoskeletal system,
which is the largest area
of physical therapy,
is not in their training or
education to any degree.
Anatomy,
the arm and leg could be an
elective at some medical
school and the cadavers
never get off their backs.
And the head and neck goes
to the dental school and so forth.
So doctors don't know the
musculoskeletal system,
yet they were in charge of us.
They ran our state boards.
They authorized our schools
and the content of what was instructive.
That had to change.
And so those of us
interested in orthopedics
and other specialty areas, sports,
we started to agitate and
try and make some changes.
When we tried to form a section,
because the only two
sections at the time in the
1960s were the education
section and private practice.
Right.
And all the education people
thought they should never
have had a section on private practice.
We should not be making money.
We should be salaried in hospitals.
Anyhow,
Ron Payton was interested in sports.
I was interested in manual
and manipulative therapy.
And he was at the same time
trying to agitate for
specialization in sports
within physical therapy.
So a committee was formed by
the APTA with Nancy Watts as chair,
Ron Payton as a clinician
on that committee, and Roger Nelson.
That committee surveyed some members.
I don't know who they
surveyed or how extensive it was,
but they were about to
report to the House of Delegates.
that there was no interest
in clinical specialization
in physical therapy.
When I got wind of that,
I knew that they were
totally wrong because when
we had tried to form a
section on manipulation, APTA said no.
So we went ahead and founded an academy,
the North American Academy
of Manipulation Therapy,
combining Canada and the
United States in those
interested in manual and
manipulative therapy.
And I spoke before the house saying,
We have 942 members in our
manual and manipular therapy group,
mostly American.
If you don't give us a home
within physical therapy,
many of my members will
wonder if their APTA
membership is worth anything.
And as a result of that,
they scrapped the report
from the committee,
which was going to
recommend against specialization.
And we got the orthopedic
section agreed to.
So the interest was in
manual and manipulative therapy.
The compromise was the orthopedic section.
And that was okay.
But jump fast forward, 1992,
the orthopedic section had
grown so large that those of us
who were interested mainly
in manual and manipulative
therapy were being
overwhelmed by the size of the meeting.
and the lack of collegiality
and opportunity to share
within our field.
So we broke away and founded
the American Academy of
Orthopaedic Manipulative
Physical Therapy.
It became endorsed by the
Orthopaedic Section and in
turn was endorsed by the APTA.
So we got to be a member of IFOMT.
IFOMT was founded in 74,
the same year as the Orthopaedic Section,
but we could not be a member of IFOMT.
It's very interesting,
the international
collaboration that was
occurring and the genesis of the section.
I'm not surprising with your
background and your close
contacts with physical
therapists in Canada,
as well as in Europe and New Zealand,
Australia.
So there was a broad reach
of this interest group.
It's also kind of ironic
that it was manual
manipulative therapy that
helped drive this,
yet that was an obstacle in
the beginning working with
APTA and then the
subsequent steps that you
went through to compromise.
Well, let me be clear.
I certainly was interested
in orthopedics and sports.
I was the first ever
physical therapist to the
Olympic team at Rome 1960
and again 1968 in Mexico.
So I had a broad orthopedic
musculoskeletal background.
But I felt that those things
were acceptable in physical therapy,
sports, and orthopedics,
where what was not accepted
and what should become
accepted and is now
accepted was manual and
manipulative therapy.
So that's where I placed my efforts,
principally in that area.
You mentioned a couple of
key people that you collaborated with,
Ron Payton, Eugene Michaels,
who was the APTA president at that time.
Who are some of the other
key individuals that you
collaborated with to make this happen?
Well,
I guess a number of people on the board,
not too many educators
because they were against manipulation.
They being very much under
the control of the medical profession.
I came to America as a
faculty position at Boston University.
I think I got the job based on my resume.
I'd published a couple of articles,
one in the New Zealand
Medical Journal and a textbook.
Both were on the spine.
both advocated manipulation.
But when I got my job,
I don't think anybody had
read what I was writing about.
But soon after I arrived,
they took a look at my book
and saw that I advocated
manipulation and they
forbade me to lecture, edit, write, teach,
associate with that field at all.
So I resigned from the university,
of course,
and went into private practice
and started teaching seminars.
But the people who I was
associated with the
founding of the orthopedic
section were the people
like Sandy Burkhart,
who I've seen you've
interviewed already and who
subsequently has passed.
I'm very pleased that you
got to interview him before
his untimely departure.
Peter Edulo, who has also passed.
And there was Dorothy Santee.
She and I wrote the history at one point,
and I thank you for sending
me that article.
I had misplaced it.
Stan Schlachter and Walt Personius.
And I'm sure there were many
others that helped us in
the initial year.
What I did early on is I stepped down.
When you start an organization,
everyone gets like a four-year term.
But if everyone kept their four year term,
at the end of that,
everyone would go and you'd
be replaced with a bunch of novices.
So I only took a two year
term just to help start the rotation.
And a couple of others did the same thing.
You know, part of your role as president,
you were also editor of the Bulletin,
correct?
Yes.
Well, that started out as a newsletter.
and then became a bulletin,
but I soon appreciated the
skills of Jim Gould.
And I could see that Jim was
a better writer,
editor than was I. And his
partner in practice,
was George Davies.
And George Davies' interest was sports.
And Jim's was obviously orthopedics.
The two of them had practiced together,
so it made good sense.
And I said to Jim, you know,
you're taking this over.
You need to go down to
Williams and Wilkins in
Baltimore and talk about
starting a journal.
And they together agreed on
starting a journal of
orthopedic and sports physical therapy.
I think that was a brilliant stroke,
bringing those two things together.
I compliment both of them for that.
Yeah,
it was a great synergy between the two.
Actually,
the JOSPT is celebrating its 45th
anniversary.
That's about right.
I interviewed George Davies
and he talked about how he and Jim would
The families would get
together and they would put
labels on the journals and
take them to the post
office to put them in the mail.
It's just kind of unbelievable.
I did that with the
orthopedic bulletin for quite a while.
There as well.
So starting any organization
is not an easy task.
What were some of the major
challenges that you and
your first board faced?
Well,
I knew very little about starting an
organization and there was
no sort of model to do it.
So I had to hire attorneys
and of course had to fund these things.
I guess getting people to
realize that coming to
seminars was not enough.
that we had to work as a
body to improve the whole profession,
not just our own practice skills,
but the whole profession
and get an organization together.
So getting interest in that,
I thought would be very difficult.
But as you learned,
we founded the North
American Academy of
Manipulation Therapy in 1967.
Seven years later, we had 942 members.
That's pretty big back then.
And so it had a momentum to it.
In those days,
Manual and manipulative
therapy was not taught at
schools of physical therapy
to undergraduates.
It was taught to graduates
who had clinical experience.
They came with a desire to learn more,
to improve their efficiency
at treating patients.
And they appreciated
everything that they could
receive from experienced
teachers like myself.
We brought Carlton Bonover from Norway.
We brought Rocco Bardo up from Chile.
And we had others coming
down from Canada to help
teach and enlarge our scope
of practice in manual and
manipulative therapy.
There was a great excitement.
Today we're faced with a
different situation where
manual and manipulative
therapy is now required to be instructed,
including thrust techniques,
which I'm totally opposed to,
to students.
And that's often being taught by
faculty who are not active
clinically and never attain
the advanced skills required for this.
And so I think today now
there's like with massage or massage,
there's kind of a loss of interest.
They think they graduate
knowing it and they really don't.
And so manual immunotherapy
in some respects is
struggling to maintain the
standard that it once had.
Yeah,
there was a recent publication in the
Physical Therapy Journal
looking at the modern
definition of orthopedic manual therapy.
Jason Silverthorne, Gail Dial,
Gail Jensen were amongst the group.
And hopefully that
publication will help guide
the profession as this area evolves.
Yes,
I think it's an excellent publication.
There was quite a few
authors signed on to it too,
which was good.
Yes, yes.
That was published in March of this,
of 2024.
Right.
I also found it interesting
that early on as you,
as this organization evolved,
you outsourced some activities.
I noted that Florence
Kendall was brought in to
help create the early
bylaws or revamp the bylaws.
Revamped them.
Yeah.
So you tapped into other
resources within the
profession at that time.
Well,
and that's the role of a chairman or
president to reach out and
make the whole thing work.
It's a leadership role and
no one can know it all.
And even if you do know it all,
you don't have enough energy.
It requires a lot of energy
from a lot of people to
make something like a
section now academy be successful.
And we could see the interest,
but we were being watched
very carefully by the APTA
that was not happy about
our having being formed and
was concerned about clinical sections.
That concern went away by about 1978,
I think, within just a few years.
Other sections started to form too.
And now, as you know,
the combined section
meeting is the most big meeting,
the only big meeting of APTA now,
and it's highly successful.
And so we are now a
profession that recognizes
clinical specialty.
Yeah, very much so.
In hindsight,
in terms of the approval process,
the early days of the section,
anything you would do
differently that may have
sped things up or made
things a little easier in
subsequent years?
Well,
thank you for sending me these
questions in advance.
I appreciated that.
And I gave a bit of thought to that.
The compromise that we made
in forming the orthopedic section
was probably necessary,
but I think in retrospect,
it would have been better
if we had not made that compromise.
But that if we said, yes,
go form an orthopedic section,
but we need a section on
manual and manipulative therapy.
And we never got that.
We became part of the
orthopedic section and
overshadowed by it eventually.
But our problem was we in
manual and manipulative
therapy wanted to belong to IFOMT,
the International
Federation of Orthopedic
Manipulative Therapy,
now Manipulative Physical Therapy.
And in order to do that,
you had to pass an exam.
And the section and academy
structure does not allow
membership by examination.
Anybody can join any section they want.
I could join the pelvic
section tomorrow if I
wanted to or the sports
section tomorrow just by paying my fee.
But to be a member of IFONC,
you can only be a voting
member of your section or
organization if you've
passed the qualifying exams
that met the standards.
the standards for practicing
manual and manipular therapy.
And we couldn't do that
within the orthopedic section.
That's one of the main
reasons we eventually broke
away and formed the
American Academy of
Ultimate Manipulative Physical Therapy.
I think from the start,
if we had held out on that,
it might have been a better
approach and we would still
be closer united to the
APTA than we are now as a
freestanding body.
But it would have taken APTA
to recognize that some
sections of our academies
have the right to be exclusive
to those who have passed an exam.
They can be an affiliate member,
associate member,
but not a voting member
until they've passed the qualifying exam.
I think that would have been a good move,
and it would have been
interesting to see how that
would have affected
residencies and fellowships today.
Right, right.
So it may have delayed the
formation a while, but in the long run,
that may have been a better process,
a better outcome.
Right, I can't be sure of that,
but there we are.
Yeah.
Okay.
I've asked this to everybody
I've interviewed,
had some pretty good comments with this,
but any behind the scenes
humorous events that people
never would be aware of by
reading the newsletter or
the bulletin or the journal?
Any such events that you recall?
Well, in truth, I don't.
Maybe I lack a sense of humor.
I don't know.
can remember some very fine
dinners I can remember
going to a dinner at one
night at one function we
had a belly dancer come up
to our table which was
quite interesting I spilt
my soup um but uh but I
can't remember anything um
that uh would be of
interest to members no okay
how about that bill well no
fair enough fair enough
So then I'll flip that a little bit.
Reflecting on your selection experiences,
what do you value most from
the experiences that you've had?
Oh,
I think the collegiality and I think
being involved in a section
and becoming an officer is
a tremendous personal
learning experience because
now you're seated with
people who are as energetic
and as convinced about
their position as you are
of yours and wanting to
contribute to a whole.
You get on a team of people
all of who've got hopefully
different talents that they
bring to bear.
And you don't get that in business.
You get,
because there's always a leader in
business.
That's why, again,
I like the term chairman
rather than president,
because presidents tend to
become arrogant leaders.
I like chairman who bring
together the collective
wisdom of a group.
And my concept of chairman
is they don't get to vote.
And that's to break a tie.
They get just to marshal
opinions and get things done.
And I like that.
But so that's a great experience.
So if you join a section,
and everybody should join
one or two of them,
particularly in their younger years,
and if you step up and volunteer,
to take part because there's
always committees that you can get on.
And then after getting to
understand things,
prepare yourself by
learning Robert's Rules of Order,
spend some time studying
that because that teaches
you governance and teaches
you how to give up and
speak and make changes to
motions and improve motions.
and also to present your own
ideas and defend them.
Without knowing Robert's Rules,
you can be railroaded by
anybody who doesn't approve
of what you're trying to get done.
So it's an essential skill
for young people to develop
in an association.
And it facilitates the whole
process for everybody when
people understand Robert's Rules.
So it's a great experience,
and I encourage the youth
of our profession to get
involved in their specialty areas,
and get involved on
committees and eventually
on the executive of their section,
academy.
I would agree with you in
terms of the value of
belonging and participating.
It's the people.
People you meet, you get to know,
and that you develop
collegial relationships
with that last your entire career,
which really make the time
investment well worthwhile.
Yeah.
In terms of early career,
you gave some good advice
in terms of how to get
involved and starting on a committee.
But understanding how
business is done at
Robert's Rules is a really
important part of that process.
And mentoring.
I mean,
current leaders and mentoring early
career or mid-career
physical therapists and
help them assume and help
them qualify for leadership
roles is all part of that.
Any other advice related to
getting involved and
starting to assume leadership positions,
leadership roles?
Yeah, step back,
take a look at how things
are functioning.
Everything can be improved.
Any motion or anything we
approve of today as to how
we should do something will
probably not be the way we
do it in 30 years.
Right.
Not in 20 years.
So why wait that long?
You should almost be doing
continuous quality improvement.
So you can critique anything
in a sense of saying, all right,
when this comes up again,
it could be improved by
doing such and such.
So be skeptical of our best
efforts and look for ways
to improve them because that can be done.
And the other thing I'd say,
just step up and volunteer.
I think volunteering...
one of the most powerful
tools I mean how did I get
to be the first ever
physical therapist on an
olympic team I had no
experience but I was going
over to europe to study and
I thought I might go down
to the olympics so I wrote
to the olympic committee in new zealand
And I said, I'm going to be in Rome.
I'd be happy to come into
the village each day.
I'll stay at a youth hostel.
I'll come in on my scooter
and treat anybody who needs treating.
And the next thing I knew,
they appointed me a member.
I think the fact that I got
myself there at my own cost helped.
I walked on with the uniform
and everything and the
opening ceremonies and
could get to go see all the
events because I was on
medical services is what my badge said.
And that got you into everything.
So it was a great experience.
And I repeated it a couple of times.
Also, the Commonwealth Games.
But I only got there by volunteering,
showing the initiative.
And I think that's true of a
lot of things in life.
Yeah, you're right.
If you wait for the door to open,
it may never open.
And so you need to knock on the door.
It doesn't mean all doors
are going to open for you,
but generally they won't
without you knocking on those doors.
Oh, I like what you've just said.
That takes me to Winston Churchill.
He had a very similar statement.
He said,
it takes someone to open the door
for you and you must ask for that favor.
But when that favor has been
granted and that door has
been opened for you,
don't ever let that person
down who opened the door for you.
Thank them and honor them.
And that was one of
Churchill's way of making progress.
He never hesitated to ask a
favor of someone to advance
himself and his ideas.
But he always remembered
them and was respectful to
the people who helped him.
Stanley,
the upcoming college conversations,
we're going to flip to the future,
you know, the next 10 years,
next 20 years.
What do you see the biggest
challenges facing not only the academy,
but the profession overall?
Well, when I think about that,
I have to think about the
student body today.
Are they the same kind of students?
Do they have the same kind
of energy and commitment to
the profession that we saw
some years ago?
That would be the first thing.
And the second would be,
what's going to be the
effect of artificial intelligence?
So addressing the first.
Physical therapy reimbursement today,
I think we'll all agree,
is not what it should be.
Back in 1998,
when the Balanced Budget Act
hit the profession,
and for the first time we
had some unemployed therapists,
salaries were dropped from
an average of about 70,000 to about 60.
And for the first time,
physical therapists,
some were unemployed.
Same with nursing and
occupational and speech therapists.
Six billion was cut from healthcare,
principally Medicare and Medicaid.
Since that time,
our salaries have not kept
pace with inflation.
We continue to see
reductions in our reimbursement.
If we were 70,000 back then,
we should be 140,000 today.
And very few therapists at
one or two years graduation
are earning anything like 140,000.
We are not,
but some other professions are.
And so I would say we have failed.
I'd say the APTA has failed.
But we are the APTA.
We, each one of us.
And we have failed to make
our value appreciated by
other than our patients.
Our patients appreciate us.
They know that.
The medical profession is
increasingly appreciating us.
It's the legislators and the
insurance companies that
have no incentive, it seems,
to facilitate our getting a
better reimbursement.
As a result,
we're not gonna get such good
quality students coming
into our profession.
If the reimbursement is not satisfactory,
they can do better elsewhere in law,
business,
physician's assistant.
So we're going to lose out
on the top talent.
Now, the top talent, A student,
doesn't mean to say you're
getting the best student.
I'm a C student.
So I honor C students.
We're the ones who hard grind away.
We get there by our effort.
And we can succeed.
But overall, though,
we would like a handful of
those top students as well.
I don't know that we're
going to keep getting them
with the current reimbursement.
And as a result of that, perhaps,
I'm not seeing as much
commitment to the
profession as I used to see.
It was not unusual 15 years
ago for someone to take a
week or two weeks out of
their life and go and attend a seminar.
Today,
you're lucky you can keep them there
for two days.
They want to get away early
on the second day.
They're not willing to give
up a piece of their lifestyle,
a piece of their personal
monies and time to commit
themselves to advance their
skill set within the profession.
To me, it's a great shame.
They believe when they get out of school,
they know most everything.
They do not.
At best, they are safe novices.
That's when the learning begins.
Now, hopefully,
residencies and fellowships
will fill in that gap
because they're not going
to seminars like they used to go.
Now, as to artificial intelligence,
I believe that much of what
we do in physical therapy,
particularly in orthopedics,
could be replaced by a very
intelligent robot fed with
all the science, exercise science,
who can monitor you 24-7
with a wristband or whatever it will be,
encouraging you,
adapting your exercises and
keeping you on track.
I think looking at the future,
it's going to be very important,
no matter what clinical area you are in,
is that you develop that
clinical presence of the
advanced clinician, the master clinician,
and you have hands-on skills.
In this increasing age of
high tech and low touch,
touch is going to mean more
to the patient.
It begins with a handshake.
And it carries on to everything we do,
whether it's in neurology
or cardiopulmonary or
manual and manipulative therapy.
If you don't have those
hands-on skills and that
personal presence with a patient,
you might be replaced by a
robot and become redundant.
So it'll be interesting to
see what happens.
We're in the early days of
this advanced technology.
But it's a little scary, and it should be,
to a number of therapists
who don't have the ability
to relate well to a patient.
Those are two big issues,
the return on investment,
people willing to pay the
money for tuition, et cetera,
going through a DPT program.
And you're right,
salaries have not kept pace with,
as our roles and
responsibilities has
evolved and we're taking
more responsibility in many situations,
you would think the
salaries would increase accordingly.
But we're not seeing that across the board,
certainly.
There is an answer in part to it.
And that's what I'll call
the boutique practice.
I don't see any harm in a
young and experienced
physical therapist who has
reached the top of their
game for going into private
practice and going off insurance.
I don't see why therapists
straight out of school get
paid the same as a 20-year
experience therapist who's
board certified and done a fellowship.
That is totally wrong to me.
I think we should have a
different scale within our
system for people who have
done a fellowship.
In New Zealand, for instance,
they have specialist practitioners,
physical therapy practitioner status.
They get higher paid.
Same in England.
But we've always said, oh,
we'll advance our skills
from bachelor's to master's to doctorate,
and we'll go through
residencies and fellowship,
but you'll all be paid the same.
That is stupid.
So it forces someone who is
particularly talented
And that should be a large
percentage of our
profession to go into
private practice and go off
insurance and a boutique
practice and treat patients
and charge accordingly.
That I think is going to be
a safeguard for the best of
the profession.
And a number are succeeding at it.
It resists working for a corporation.
It resists working under
Medicare and Medicaid.
And it caters, yes, unfortunately,
to those who can afford it.
And that's a shame.
So if you're going to go
into that style of practice,
perhaps you will do 10% pro
bono to feel better about
what you're doing.
But it will provide you with
an opportunity for
enjoyable practice where
you're really appreciated
and you can make a good income.
I've met a number of early
to mid-career physical
therapists that have
established such a boutique
practice as you described,
and many of them do provide
a certain percentage of pro bono care.
That's one of the things
that gives me some
encouragement about the
future is I've seen some
really creative practice
models out there developed
by these early mid-career people,
and they've been very,
very successful at it.
So hopefully I agree with
you more and more.
We'll see more and more of that.
I hope they publish how they did it,
what their model or models are,
what worked,
what didn't work to assist
everybody else in the profession.
Not me.
I'm 86 now and not going
back into private practice anytime soon.
So your boutique practice days are over.
Yes, yes, yes.
You know,
also to highlight your comments
about residency education.
I mean, a new graduate is a new graduate,
whether they're coming out
of dental school, med school, you know,
a DPT program and, you know,
the other professions,
it's just expected that you
will do a residency and
then maybe a fellowship.
Yes.
And I also find it
interesting that most of
our physical therapists are
not specialists in our current system.
And there really isn't a
residency path for our
generalist or our primary
care physical therapist.
If you're in that kind of a practice model,
primary care or our generalist,
you're being asked to learn
more and more about more and more.
When you specialize and self-specialize,
you learn more and more
about less and less.
Your focus becomes more narrowed.
And so I'm hoping that at
some point we'll have a
residency pathway for our
primary care physical therapists.
Well,
that's been a special interest of
yours and introducing
medical diagnostics into the profession.
A key area, if we have autonomy,
we need to be taking more
responsibility because if
we're the primary care physician,
if you like,
of the neuromuscular skeletal system,
we have to know more about
than we were originally
taught some years ago.
We've got to be able to
replace at least part of
the basic medical examination.
And I think that's very important.
And thank you for your contribution there.
Thank you.
So Stanley,
any final thoughts about the academy,
our section, the formation,
how it's evolved?
No, not really.
I just hope that it
maintains the standards
that it's had in the past.
I'm talking about the section.
Last year, for instance,
at the annual meeting,
there was no annual
business meeting for the first time.
There were a lot of functions,
but even those functions
like the Paris
Distinguished Service Award
usually carries a medal.
there was no medal and the
rose award which is usually
um accompanied by it's my
roses to distinguished
members of the section they
were absent too and I think
those touches are important
because they distinguish the section.
They honor our founders and those who,
like Steve Rose,
who made great
contributions in research and so on.
And we need to do that.
And when young people see that being done,
they can aspire to that.
When that's not done with
any proper ceremony,
then there's little to
aspire to and you just
settle into where you are already.
Aspiration.
leadership, examples, mentors,
that's what shows us a
pathway ahead in our lives.
And if we don't have them
and don't see them in our association,
then it's a falling away.
And I think, well,
some award ceremonies can go on too long.
I don't think they need to
go on as long as they sometimes do.
Certain aspects of it need
to be preserved and celebrated.
Yeah.
those kind of traditions um
to highlight and to honor
and as you said give people
a target to aspire to are a
really important mechanisms
place um well very good
well stanley I want to
thank you for your time and
your and your insights and
And certainly all you've
done for our section,
our academy and the profession as well.
And it's still good to see
that you're still involved.
You're still watching and
watching over things and
serving as a mentor for so
many of us over the years.
Well,
I'm off to Switzerland this weekend
for the IFOMPT meeting in Basel,
and I'll have a few words to say there.
They're celebrating their 50th also.
As well, that's right, 1974.
And I was the founding
chairman and second president.
Yes.
yes thank you bill very much
for this opportunity to
share my thoughts with the
members of our academy yeah
it was a pleasure and honor
stanley this is a wonderful
way again to wrap up our
look back at the first 50
years um you know as I
mentioned early on the
future couch conversations
will be pivoting to the
next 10 or 20 years
and interviewing key
individuals that are kind
of setting the direction,
setting the course for
future orthopedic practice,
education and research.
So again,
I want to thank all of you for
joining us today.
Thank you.