President Message

Dear Members,

Welcome to the 2023 Newsletter and the first President’s Message of the year. We have started the year off busy, and I really appreciate the meme about January being the longest year ever. We have set up our Board of Director’s meetings for the year and that calendar is available. These meetings are open to all of you, so if you have some things that you’d like to address please feel free to join us! We have also secured our 2023 Conference location and are currently working on the date. We look forward to you all joining us in October of 2023 at Quinnipiac University! Keep your eye out for the save the date. 

This week is Combined Sections Meeting. I plan to attend the APTA National Board of Directors meeting on Tuesday, followed by the Council of Chapter Presidents meeting and Component leadership meeting prior to the start of the conference. If you’re going to be there, please e-mail me and we can meet up! Would love to meet more members face to face.

We have a couple fundraisers coming up. The first one, we are hosting Owens Recovery Science and their blood flow restriction course on Saturday April 22^nd. We used this as a successful fundraiser last year, and are hoping to continue to share the information surrounding this modality, and assist with our fund boosting! The next event is our Golf Tournament. We will be returning to Keeney Park in June and are excited to see you all there. Even if you aren’t golfing, please come join us for some cocktails and appetizers after the event.

Our students are busy. Two of them were elected to national positions; Chief Delegate and Board of Directors. There is some structural changes of Councils, Societies and Networks that will be coming out in the 2024 year; but for the 2023 year, Connecticut is well represented at the student level and national level. They are collaborating with other New England schools to continue the New England Student Conclave, which is April 1^st. There are some vendor spots open, so if you need PT/PTA positions filled and are recruiting, I would encourage you to be at this event! Or if you have a residency program, this is a great venue to promote your program.

Our SIGs and Committees are hard at work creating educational opportunities and community outreach programs. They’re always looking for new members and remember, it’s open to all. I encourage you to follow them on social media to see what they’re up to. In addition to their own work, we are collaborating with the other regional states represented by Liberty Square Group. This has given us an avenue to share marketing opportunities and promotional opportunities, support educational series, share resources and presenters, and reduce the amount of time to put together these programs. We are actively working on specialty collaboration as well to provide more specific content. 

Our legislative team is working hard. We have already submitted testimony for a few proposed bills, including protecting our ability to call ourselves Doctors for those that have earned their Doctorates. We are working to continue to finalize the PT Compact and are actively preparing for some scope of practice expansion. We are looking to partner more with the Connecticut Orthopedic Society, to provide education and networking opportunities. They have their annual meeting on May 12^th and have invited the PT association to attend.

Lastly, we are aware of the mental health continuing education requirements that was passed into law. This applies to your first license renewal, and at least once every six years. We are working with the Question, Persuade and Refer Institute Gatekeeper Training to assist with educational series for our Physical Therapists. Should you need to complete this before we get our educational series up and running, the individual course is $29 and takes about an hour. If you have more questions or concerns, or connections for educational presentations surrounding QPR and suicide prevention, please let us know!

As always, thank you for your attention and your membership!

Stefanie Bourassa DPT, CSCS

President, APTA CT