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Dear Members,
I’m writing to you all from the American Physical Therapy Association Leadership Congress in Washington DC. It’s always inspiring when you come to these meetings. Just like going to CSM where you come back with a fire lit under you and, “wow, watch out profession we are going to change the world.”
I’m hoping to keep that fire lit and keep the momentum going when the House closes Monday August 15 and the return to our lovely state commences.
Just a few highlights so far.
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Friday we went to APTA headquarters. I, along with the MA president Eric Folmar, met with our VP of Clinical Integration and Innovation, Drew Contreras. I encourage you to tune in when attending CSM in February as he is going to highlight the current state of innovation and technology as it affects our profession. There is still much work to do in that area; as we know, the tech world is exploding. From wearable technology to Artificial Intelligence; it’s more than just Telehealth and we should look at this technology as an opportunity to enhance our profession, not as a threat. We are in the position to set the industry standards; from making sure that a licensed Physical Therapist is always at the helm in these Digital Health Platforms, to expanding our relationships at the grassroots level with these tech development companies; we have to be there, we have to be at the table with them and setting forth our profession as it grows. And I will make sure that we are; let me know if there is anyone that is interested in partnering with me!
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Saturday morning was the Chapter Presidents meeting. There are definitely continued themes across all of our states; membership engagement, legislative themes, succession planning and engaging of leaders. I’m encouraged with where we are at right now in our state and I’m incredibly thankful for all of our member engagement as we are really pushing the needle in Connecticut and I was able to share some of our ideas that are leading the way for the other chapters.
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Saturday afternoon finished with a meeting with the academies, executives and chapter presidents. We worked with Foresight; a company that helped to survey members and non-members and provide a map of implicit biases of our profession and APTA; in their words, orthodoxies. There was engaging conversation that many of these implicit biases are not new, but the we need to meet these biases like we meet any of them, with questioning, inquiring, knowledge and willingness to have our opinions changed.
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Saturday evening a few of us successfully completed a 5K; in all transparency the T-shirt is pretty cool, and it was in actuality a walk/jog, given the state of an artificial left knee joint; see I’m not just a member I’m a customer!
House of Delegates updates will be shared once the minutes are finalized, but we did some great work in advancing the profession!
After that, we got to celebrate Angela Campbell in her Lucy Blair Service award! Thank you again Dr. Campbell for your commitment to our profession and future profession.
Now for some quick updates for things happening at home!
- The programming committee is hard at work finalizing the schedule for the Annual Conference. Reminder, that’s October 22nd at the University of Hartford. It will also be our Annual meeting at lunch time. This year we are planning on utilizing QR codes at the annual conference to get your feedback especially on legislative issues that you would like us to push forth, as well as other opportunities to engage membership and even non-membership in our continuous pursuit of building a stronger community.
- Our awards and Scholarship portal applications are open for nominations! If you or someone you work with is doing a fantastic job with patient care, impacting the profession or the community, working as a team, please consider nominating them! Share with your students that there are scholarships available, and encourage them to apply.
Stefanie Bourassa President, APTA CT
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