In this episode we discuss the updated education requirements from our college in BC. While some take this update to think they don't have to take continuing education anymore, we argue that it is our responsibility as healthcare professionals to do so.
And as always, check out our websites.
www.themtdc.com
www.ericpurves.com
and our emails:
jamie@themtdc.com
hello@ericpurves.com
In this episode we discuss the updated education requirements from our college in BC. While some take this update to think they don't have to take continuing education anymore, we argue that it is our responsibility as healthcare professionals to do so.
And as always, check out our websites.
www.themtdc.com
www.ericpurves.com
and our emails:
jamie@themtdc.com
hello@ericpurves.com
You're listening to the massage therapist Development Initiative. I'm Jamie Johnston. And I'm Eric Purvis. This is a podcast by massage therapists for massage therapists. Our objective is to simplify how to be a more evidence informed practitioner. Let's dig into this episode. Sometimes things in our profession change, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse. And sometimes we're not sure if it's for the better or the worse. This is one of those instances where I know that this is instituted with other colleges, but for our college in British Columbia, they have come out with a new standards of practice for us, where we don't necessarily have to take a continuing education course for credit, but they have sort of laid the onus on us, and they've come up with career spanned competencies that we look at, for us to decide which direction we would like to take our own practice. That's right.
Eric Purves:I think yeah, I think that's that's very, right. It's, I have mixed feelings about this. And there's a lot of goodness, but there's also a lot of stuff that makes me concerned. And I think we should probably start off by saying our bias is that as people that earn a living, teaching Con Ed and providing educational opportunities to massage therapists, you know, we do get a lot of people that take courses just because they need the credits. Yeah. And they don't necessarily really care what the course is, they may be aren't that engaged with the material. I would say this is a minority of people. But this does, this does happen. And you always see and, you know, I've been doing this since 2015. And you always say no, then to cycle, you get a massive rush of people that are desperate for credits. And they just ended oftentimes, when you ask them, they're just like, Well, this was available. And it was the closest one to me, is the closest one to me before we added online stuff. So people would would would, would do that. And so from a financial perspective, and from a business perspective, the old system was was good. But it also, I think you'd probably agree that it was not always you wouldn't always get a full room of desire of people that really wanted to be there, that were really engaged. You'd have some people there's like, I think the credits.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah. And that's, I mean, even if I'm teaching a first aid course, it's the same thing. It's, you know, some, I mean, you try to make the class fun and make it so that people walk away going okay, that was fun class, but they're the biggest reason they're there is because the college just said, you have to take it. Yes. Right. So
Eric Purves:I mean, and it's important for us to to have these, these, what they call this career span competencies, or what do they call it, they call it the professional practice Development Program, or the calling of the PDP, the practice development program, which looks very similar to Ontario strive program, where it's basically more of a self reflective self directed learning plan, which you create yourself. And you basically have to follow these kind of 15 where they call them career span competencies, and we'll talk about those I think individually here in a minute, the abyss, you have to follow those, and you have to basically create a learning plan that meets those competencies that are relevant to you, which I really like because I think if you as a clinician, and so as someone who still needs to take CS, even we teach them, we also have to take them ourselves, it can be very difficult to find stuff that is interesting or relevant to you, or that you want to take or that you want to take. So I think this actually is good. So good. The negative is from a business perspective, like it's easy to sell courses when there's minimum. CCS. Yeah. This is good, though, in the fact that it gives it gives our mentees the ability to choose and pick the kind of the direction they want to go based on their interests and based on where they are in their career. And based on the the populations they treat, or the environments they work in. That is good. And I'm not going to do that. I think that's good. I'm very curious about how this is gonna be adopted by the profession.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah, it's more like more in this case of a practitioner benefit, which is great. Right? Because Because this way, you get to decide where you want your career to go, which is we should we should all have that autonomy within our career to be able to to say, you know that I don't want all that to say that we specialize in something but this is the things I want to focus on in my career. These are the directions that I want to go and they're giving you the leeway to say good then go do that. Which is great. But the I think it's important that are hopefully are going to talk a little later now, but it'll bring it up. Now, it's important for us to take into account that they're giving you that leeway, and giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're actually going to do it. So, we've seen, we've seen some debates, for lack of a better term in some of the Facebook groups where people are like, great, I don't have to take CTCs. Now, that's not what they're saying. They're, and by saying that, you're actually almost like, kicking dirt in their face, because with them doing it this way, they've taken a step back. And when we're giving you the benefit of the doubt, we're giving you some some leeway for you to decide which direction you want to go. It doesn't mean you don't have to not take courses. You're so they're putting their faith in you that you're going to be a professional and say, Okay, I'm going to keep up with this. And I'm going to make sure that I'm as highly educated as I can be in my career, in order to be of best benefit to my patients, which is the college's job is to protect those patients. So they're now giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're going to do everything you can for the benefit of those people. Yes, yeah, and
Eric Purves:I think the only difference with this is, is you don't have a minimum number of credits to take, you don't have to go through the approval process, which I must admit like, right, it's kind of annoying as the you have to submit all this paperwork and fill it all the stuff every time for a course. It's it's kind of a pain in the butt. So now people can pick and choose when they want, they don't have to worry about going through that process. My worry. The worry, though I do have this as is the college was going towards a their evidence informed practice thing, which was good, which was moving in the right direction, even though stuff that wasn't in this might be another podcast, if there wasn't evidence based or evidence informed, was still getting pushed and being called Evidence Informed. And being approved. So I would say the approval process for that was probably not as stringent as it should have been. But they were moving in the right direction. Now they're doing this and they're saying we're gonna we trust you to come up with stuff yourself. But without an approval process. How do you How is this ensuring that people are going to learn stuff that's relevant? Yeah. Or learn stuff that is science based or evidence based or stuff that is defensible with current research? And that is where I get a little bit kind of concerns those being like, well, how is this going to be implemented? Or how are people going to adopt this into the practice? And I don't know enough about Ontario's program. It's been around for longer.
Jamie Johnston:I think a few years, it hasn't been around like a super long time, I don't know, but
Eric Purves:maybe three or four years longer than like previously. And they used to have a minimum like a CDC requirement as well. And now they have more freedom. The freedom is good, because allows us to choose. But it does. I think the problem that results in is I think it can potentially allow more of the pseudoscience, more of the on defensible or non evidence based stuff to flourish, because now that stuff doesn't have to be approved. Yeah. So I'm kind of stuck in this this, I'm not really sure how to feel about it yet. Until I see it in action. Yeah. Yeah,
Jamie Johnston:I agree. And especially like, you know, when we look at the list of things, sorry, I'm just going to bring it up again, here. Of course, I mean, the the topics that they give, that we have to meet up to are great, you know, maintaining a safe work environment, maintaining comprehensive records, manage time and resources effectively treat others respectfully use evidence informed approach and your work interact effectively with other professionals like all great things that we should be focused on, within our continuing education, but not a lot of those are instances where there's courses offered on them, which is probably why they've developed some of those courses that we have to take, which is fine. But when we look at some of the other ones, like functioning in a patient centered manner, we should all be for patient centered care. But to go back to the point that you were talking about, we see a lot of other comments and a lot of other terminology that's used that isn't patient centered, that is still being pushed as a narrative that we should use with patients. So So there, there comes back to that concern about whether those things are going to be approved for people to take to take courses that aren't patient centered has absolutely
Eric Purves:yeah, yeah. And I agree that there's, you know, you look at this, the the 15 CSE isn't, you know, I don't know if we can do one read them all. We don't read them all. And we'll read the ones that are the ones out that are probably most relevant. You said the first one here was function a patient centered matter. Right, and that's a good one. So working in the best interest of the patients and so their brief descriptor here is I won't read the whole thing it says you ensure that patient one wellbeing is at the center of the decisions you make, and are aware of your obligations to safeguard young persons and vulnerable adults. Okay, that makes That's seems very, that makes sense, right? That's, that should be. That should be just a given right? You give each patient your complete attention and allow sufficient time to fully address their needs. You respect patient uniqueness, and take into account their views, preferences and concerns, which is great, right? So when people come in, they tell us what their issues and concerns are. And then we do our best to help them within our scope of practice. You actively involve patients in decision making and ensure that they're fully informed about and consent to the services you provide. Which is great, because so people come in, we allow we give them information, we allow them to make decisions, based on on our own. But the problem isn't, I think you and I've talked about this before, if we haven't talked about the podcast, we definitely talked about almost every time when we teach is patients are fully informed about and consent to the services you provide. Yeah. And if you want to expand on that, because I know you, you have a great little spiel about this is that, but if we're giving them information that's not evidence based, that's based on beliefs or historical ideas, but not based on current science, is that informed consent? Are we giving them proper information to allow them to make decisions about their health care?
Jamie Johnston:It's not. Right. So as long as as long as we're stuck to those, many of those old narratives that we've learned in schools that have since been proven wrong, if we're still relying on that, I think a perfect example was, and I don't know who the person was. So I'm not, you know, trying to put them out of them in any way. But when we went to the, the ROTC conference couple years ago, that was based around cancer. And the person stood up and said that they had been a therapist for 25 years, and they were shocked that we were allowed to treat people with cancer. So in 25 years, this person had taken, I don't know what for continuing education, but had not gotten past the fact that cancer wasn't a contraindication anymore, at least, parts of cancer weren't a contraindication anymore, I was baffled that it was okay to give somebody with cancer massage, when we know now that's like one of the best things we can do to help. So for for whatever course, courses that person had taken in 25 years, had obviously not been given enough updated information to understand that. So I would make maybe a bad assumption that they're probably still using techniques and narratives that were based 25 years before. And so if you're doing that, you're not getting informed consent from your patients, because you're still telling them that you're unwinding their fascia or your you know, altering their cranial sacral rhythm or, or any of these other things that we learned that we know are true,
Eric Purves:increasing circulation, and therefore spreading cancer, putting too much load on the heart, that kind of stuff, which we know has no science behind it,
Jamie Johnston:that you're increasing the risk of a diabetic reaction with a massage, right? Like there's so many of those, right. So if you're still using those outdated narratives, then you're not getting informed consent from the patient, because none of those things are real. So that, again, it's, you know, depending on what the course is people are going to be taking are, and the more that we talk about patient centered care, we see in many of these forms, people use a number of other I don't want to say it's a description, many other terminology, terminologies to try to represent the same thing. And one of the ones that I see that I that I never really understood was heart centered care. And then I Googled it. And if you look at the definition of heart centered care, so I literally Googled heart centered definition. It says being heart centered means that you are aware of what you desire in life, you know, your values, you know, how to take responsibility for yourself and your emotions. You make choices that honor your needs, values and beliefs. No point does that say anything about a patient and collaborating on what you're doing with them? It's every everything in there is you you're you, you, you. So if you're going in and saying that you're providing heart centered care, it has nothing to do with the patient.
Eric Purves:It's clinician centered. Yeah, yeah.
Jamie Johnston:Which is the exact opposite of what the call is requiring us.
Eric Purves:And that's, that's a term two that you know, I've seen floating around a bit and people grasp onto it because it sounds very holistic and very great, but I'm sure there are attempt is the intent is probably in the right place. But I agree with you that the if we are wanting to be a science based, mainstream musculoskeletal profession, that and we've said this before, we've said many times that we definitely have the capabilities of being leaders in the treatment of management of any musculoskeletal thing. For the most part, when we're making up terms, or developing new terms about stuff, and trying to like, come up with their own acronyms or own explanations that have no scientific basis, that's not serving our profession, or the public's best interest. And we see that all the time, we have
Jamie Johnston:to keep in mind that the college's responsibility is to protect the public's best interest. Yes. And there goes back to their putting their faith in you that you're going to do the right thing by them developing things this way. So, but then it also goes back to like, how closely is it going to be monitored as to what your what course you're taking or what you're doing? Well, we'll see how that develops as this goes on. And hopefully, they do a good job of making it so that that therapists are taken to task for what they're taking, what courses they're taking.
Eric Purves:Yeah, and that's the one thing that worries me too, is they say all these words, but they're very vague. Nothing is really very specific. And so how is the college gonna? Like, what are the metrics for that? How's the college going to get to know if someone is fulfilling out or not? When you don't have? Like, here's like, the person who is going to work in that patient centered manner. What's that mean? Yeah, without the college, really providing specific definitions or without the schools teaching that specifically, it makes me think that's, that's up to so much interpretation, which is good that it shouldn't necessarily be these hard and fast rules. But it also I think, can allow for a lot of a lot of like, really pushing boundaries of what that means, like you said, like heart centered. Yeah. You know, that's, that's not even a thing. Yeah.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah. At least provide a guideline of some sort. Yeah. Just a, this is what we expect. Yeah. And this isn't going to be implemented until January. So those things could still come out. In the meantime.
Eric Purves:Yeah, the college did say that they are going to put out more kind of FAQs and more information about it. But this is this what we have to work off. So we're just making judgments based on our initial reactions. Yeah, one of the other ones, too, which I think was worth talking about, because a lot of good stuff in here, right, maintain a safe work environment, maintain comprehensive records, personal wellness, you know, treat others respectfully, like, yeah, this just makes sense. So it's like that shouldn't even be on here almost, because that should just be
Jamie Johnston:given. That's common sense. Common, it should
Eric Purves:be common sense, that should be like, and we all do that anyway. But some of this one here, which I thought was interesting. And it says, practice in a manner consistent with current developments in the profession. You take regular active steps to keep your knowledge and skills up to date. This includes reading professional literature, attending conferences, participating in courses and workshops, and consulting with colleagues. This one to me is one of the ones I like the most. Yeah. However, how this is interpreted and how this is applied in a practice or into someone's Learning Plan. Could be the problem if someone is has embedded to a technique, or they might work in is embraces a technique, where they view themselves through a specific like acronym or through a specific just as the population of people I treat? And you maybe you have somebody, you've taken all of their levels of their courses. Is that Is that consistent with the current development in the profession? Not if they're still teaching outdated things? Yeah. And so that's where that's where I think, okay, so what is current developments? And how do you know, or how's the college going to decide what is the current development? I would I would read that and be like, what's the current science say? So use the cancer example? Yeah, we can massage people that have cancer, whether they are currently undergoing cancer treatments, or whether they are palliative, or whether they fully recovered and they've got, you know, back whoring and surgery or neuropathy is after we can treat those people and we're not going to increase the risk of harm, harming physical harm. However, using the cancer example, what if we start pathologizing? And so you've taken some, I don't know, some courses on cancer now and oncology and those courses are taught with a non science in foreign non science based framework. Yep. And you're treating people based on that framework. And that might not be in the person's best interest. But that might be what you learned in the course you maybe thought an instructor was great, maybe thought the course was great. Maybe you had some great colleagues in there. But maybe the information wasn't based on current science. But you were led to believe it was, but you were led to believe it was is that's not that's inconsistent with current developments in the profession.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah. Yeah. It's it's almost too bad that there isn't something in there that talks about critical thinking.
Eric Purves:That's like, that's untrue. I just, I was thinking that too. I read this, like, there's nothing in here about engaging in logical fallacies or critical thinking or any
Jamie Johnston:of that stuff, you know, reading, like, yeah, being able to let's just go back to the cancer example. That if you look at like the new clinical guidelines on, say, cancer care, and M escaping, yeah, there's a paper out there on it. I'm sure I haven't somewhere because I'm putting a horse together on that. And then being able to go, Okay, well, that's the the creme de la creme. That's that. Those are the papers I should look at. And then he will take a course that has a whole bunch of case studies that have been refuted by the clinical practice guidelines. Yes. But the person teaching the course presents all these papers and says no weapons based on research, because there's there, we need to develop something to be able to, for therapists to critically look at that and go, Okay, this isn't based on the best research. So maybe I should go home and look at some of that now and see if that refutes, what would what I just learned in this course.
Eric Purves:Yeah, and you do get a lot of that in our profession, not just pick our profession, but not just ask, but you do get a lot of that, where there's these anecdotal stories that are that are being sold as hard science. And we look at the evidence based framework of like your, your clinical experience, your personal experience is part of that. And you don't want to refute that. Because there, you know, you treat somebody and they get better. And you do that numerous times. And you see, because this one results, and that's part of your evidence. Yeah. But the problem is, is the reasons for why they might get better might be very different from what you think. Absolutely. And maybe what you're doing, and the stories that you're putting on some of these people and these beliefs that you're putting onto them might be harmful, because might take away their autonomy or their self efficacy. That is, I think we're the why it's important for us to be mindful of the difference between using anecdotal stories to validate why it is you're doing what you're doing versus the science because the science is there to inform those anecdotes. Exactly. I think I don't know if that's the right. If I said that. Right. That's how I see it. Saying that, again, I think you've got out and why
Jamie Johnston:that anecdote worked. Yeah. And that comes in, that all comes back to the second point, and their thing is communicating effectively. Yes, right. So being able to take the current science and communicate that effectively to a patient so that these things aren't happening. So that we aren't just using this anecdotal evidence and saying, yes, it's it's because of XYZ when it's actually because of ABC.
Eric Purves:Yeah. And that's not pain. splaining? No, are not science playing. I think that's sometimes when we think about effective communication, we were like, well, how do I explain pain to people? Or how do I explain this dysfunction? Or how do I explain this disease people? And we just kind of like vomit information, people. That's not what it's saying. So I think that's part of effective communication is communicating a level that people want, as well as our own knowledge, like how well can we communicate? And how much and what how much information do they need? And how is it received? And I think they do say thing in here, too. You communicate clear and concise as possible and take steps to ensure that you are understood. That's a really important piece. And surely you understood it, which comes down to asking them if they've understood or ask them to repeat it back to you. Yeah,
Jamie Johnston:there's that old thing of like, Tell me Tell it back to me like you're explaining it to a 10 year old. Yeah, exactly. So that they you get whether they absolutely understand what you were saying. Because if they, if they repeat it back, and it's not at all what your intent was, then you need to change that communication and correct it before moving on with your treatment and all that and that's all part of that consent thing as well. Yeah. Right. And I like like what they put in there is like even reading nonverbal cues, reading body language, things like that. So that you know, if you're saying something to somebody, because I know there's been plenty of times in my career where I've stuck my foot in my mouth and you see the person kind of looking at you and being able to read that patient and go, Okay, I need to take a step back here. Because I either said something wrong or said something they misunderstood and are not taking the way I intended. So there's a little bit more behind that. But communicating effectively is obviously going to be an important part of what
Eric Purves:we do. Yeah. I think a lot of the stuff comes comes back to that effective communication.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah, yeah. Well, especially when we look at the, the clinical guidelines, and like the best approach for MSK care is always that reassurance, education. Right? Those two first things are all about communication. Yeah. And there's a reason that the, the importance of those things are number one, and two, and then movement and actual manual therapy, or three and four, yeah, those, those things are more important. So one of the other ones that I like, that they put in is that you work within the limits of professional knowledge and skills, because that we go back to that story I told about the person at the conference and the cancer thing, but also, when we look at the brand new student that's coming out. So let's just say, a student, I graduated in December, we got out of school. So let's just say that I graduated in December of 2022. And then all of a sudden, in 2023, I look at that, and I go, Oh, I don't have to take CCS anymore, then you should be very limited as to what you can do with your patients. Yeah. Right. Like, if you're making if you're staying within that professional knowledge and skills. When I look back at what I know now compared to what I got out of school, it's light years difference. And I'm not trying to say that I'm some smart person, it's just that I've learned a lot in the last 10 years. And the way that I treat is different now the way I communicate is different now. So I think that's a really important one because hopefully those students that are coming out brand new aren't going, Oh, perfect. They've just told me I don't know how to fix the season.
Eric Purves:you'd hope that students like you're frustrated and so to school would want to to learn and I mean, I've been the I think we're a little bit of a bias or a little bit of an echo chamber, or at least for me it's been for myself is that a lot of the people that take my courses or sign up for my memberships or to take some of mine are new grads are relatively new grads that want to learn more, that have been exposed to stuff. I would say that you don't get nearly as many of the 20 plus year veterans taking stuff. So I mean, I could just just be me, but that's just my my anecdotal experiences. A lot of the younger and younger, they're always young, but new to new therapists. Younger field. Yeah, usually younger than me. But, but new newer therapists are those people are younger than you and me. So yeah, it's true. That's true. Now, didn't used to be that way, you know, are people that want to learn and a lot of them will take stuff, even though there's no season rolls? Yeah. Because like, I want to learn this information. This is important to me. This is important to people I want to help. I want to I want to learn all the things. Yeah. So I hope that that becomes a kind of common thing. And I hope that when people are finishing school, like the educators or the schools now are kind of planting that seed to basically be like, you're a lifelong learner. You don't need to see seeds, but you still need to learn like it's really important. Find a population or find an area of interest or find people you want to learn from and take their stuff, because that's going to be valuable. Yeah. I like what you said a few minutes ago is that the If I think back to how I used to think and how I used to practice now, I used to treat people and how is communicate compared to you know, the last, you know, seven or eight years, like it's embarrassing.
Jamie Johnston:I've often said I should go back and apologize to most of those people.
Eric Purves:Yeah. And I am so surprised sometimes that people still came back. When, when when you but I guess it's just a matter of people had this these expectations. And you provided that to them, and you thought you're helping them. But I think a lot of times I was I wouldn't say you're always making them worse, but you weren't always helping them. Yeah. Right. And I think that the it is hard to think that way. And you think even to when you're starting to adapt and trying to be more what you call science based or evidence based. And you go through that process. I think you screw up even more because you're trying to change that narrative. You're trying to change how people think. And you're you're doing stuff and saying things which really unhelpful and probably quite harmful. Yeah. So I think there's a learning process which we all have to go through. And I think anybody that feels that they know it all, or feels they don't need to learn any more, I think is that's a dangerous thing.
Jamie Johnston:You should probably leave the professionist Yeah, I
Eric Purves:mean, I always want to learn more because I never feel like I know enough. Yet. That's that's me. And I would hope that the majority of us that way, like Yeah, you know what, I would really like to learn more about ABC, whatever that whatever this field is, or this area is I want to learn more about, I don't know, sensory neurophysiology or I want to learn more about you know, helping geriatric population of seniors I want to help more with athletics or I want to help more With chronic pain or whatever it is you choose you like, I think that people should just like, first. And then, and hopefully, hopefully, my hope would be with with this new stuff here with these new, like you for another cold career spanned competencies nothing in here talks about techniques. No. Right. It's not about learning new techniques. It's not about expanding your techniques. It's not about the only assays they take technical knowledge and skills.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah, but at the bottom, but there's nowhere in there that talks about technique.
Eric Purves:Yeah. Which is to me is sorry, that about the above.
Jamie Johnston:It says you apply your knowledge and technical skills, procedures, equipments, devices, techniques. But you're you're gathering skills, to gather information, assess, plan, land or deliver services. So even with that, they're not saying that you go out and learn a whole bunch of new techniques, it's that you gather everything that you know, and apply it.
Eric Purves:Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I read that again. And you either does say technique, but doesn't talk about gaining new techniques. And so much of what we learned in our professional we've talked about this before is that people are looking to always get new techniques all the time, right, and collecting these these tools. And there's, there's a certain point where like, yeah, you want different ways of touching people. But I would say that, you know, majority of what we learn in terms of how to touch people, is we learned in school.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah, I probably learned everything I need to know about how to test people in the first three terms of school.
Eric Purves:Yeah. And it's just a matter of refining that and kind of developing your own kind of.
Jamie Johnston:Yeah, the way you like to do it the way your patients like you to do it.
Eric Purves:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. One other one here, I thought was really good. Kind of next point was. And this is really what it comes down to now, we've talked with this before about evidence based versus evidence informed. I'm not as I initially liked the evidence informed approach or that evidence informed definition. But I've now kind of gone back to I think I prefer evidence based, just because that's but same idea anyway, use an evidence blank approach in your work, right, as they say you make workplace decisions by integrating the best available evidence relating to the situation at hand, including research and credible published information, your own professional knowledge, including that of trusted colleagues, the patient perspective and the practice context. So if we're using evidence to like, we really should be using evidence to inform our practice and combining what's the research say, right, so usually, when we talk with the stuff, we teach the stuff, right, we usually talk about clinical practice guidelines, which are pretty special, specifically vague to be able to apply this information to people. But the thing that's interesting with me that with this, though, is that if you said to most, I should say most if you said to many people was evidence based practice means you're what's evidence informed practice mean to you? You're gonna not get it, you're gonna get a lot of different answers. And I think the problem is, is that that terminology, or that phrase of evidence based or evidence informed, is not really well understood.
Jamie Johnston:Even within leaders in the profession, it's not really well understood.
Eric Purves:Yeah, and I think I feel I mean, I don't know, I feel like some of you, we say these things are pretty bold statements are kind of throwing people under the bus. But not anybody specifically. But you do see that all the time is like, so if something is evidence based, I mean, just based on the best available evidence for that. So let's use cancer, because that seems to be the the one. So if you're if you're say your course, is evidence based, oncology, evidence based massage therapy for the oncology patient, there's a core same for you. And how are you deciding what's what? What information? Are you finding? It's the evidence for that course. And you know, how to critique that evidence. Do you know how do you or do you know how to apply that? Is that evidence good or bad? Right? Is that are those case studies? Are these clinical practice guidelines? Are these just a single randomized controlled trial? is a systematic review with meta analyses? And then is there is there maybe some qualitative stuff there, but like, how do people feel that are being treated with cancer? How is how meaningful or important are these massage requirements for them? Like there's a lot of different types of evidence that we could use?
Jamie Johnston:And are we applying it individually to each person who comes in because that's going to change with each person?
Eric Purves:Exactly. So that always you know, this kind of this kind of stuff. I love it. I think it's great. But my skeptical nature of where I'm, you know, I kind of don't really believe in anything. Now, let's Nilus nihilist nihilist nihilist doing bit of a nihilist sometimes is I think okay, this is great, but Is this information going to be? Is this going to be applied in it to courses or to workshops or to conferences? I don't know.
Jamie Johnston:Or even it, even if it's not a course workshop or conference, let's just say it's a therapist who has that interest and has maybe taken some and now is going, Okay, well, now I'm going to look at a bunch of the research on my own. Yeah. Are they going to apply it the same way? Right. Right. Maybe it's not even from the course. Because Because part of this is, hey, you should be able to sit down and read a research paper and put in that, yes, I've done this. Are they going to? Is that individual going to look and go? Okay, how do I apply this to Bob, that comes in compared to Mary that comes in who are both dealing with cancer? Right? Right. different cancers, different expectations, different things all around that, right? So it can come down to that individual basis as well, just not the court, not just the cost basis. And that
Eric Purves:goes back to function, a patient centered manner, which was like the, one of the earlier earlier points, right. And that's, and this is this thing is it's interesting. So we talked about evidence informed evidence based stuff, and they say here, they say they say, including research and credible publishing information. Now, this is the problem. Right, as a profession. I was told recently that a lot that some of the schools have actually got rid of the research section of the court. Oh, I got the program. Like there's no more research and statistics section. Wow. Because it's time instructors. You can you don't need to learn that stuff to pass your board exams.
Jamie Johnston:Well, then, how do you write your, your your, what did they call it? Not a case study
Eric Purves:here? You basically do a case study presentation. Yeah.
Jamie Johnston:How do you rate your case study if you don't know how to look at research?
Eric Purves:And this is just totally anecdotal. This is what I heard was they just teach basics of that, in that when they doing that portion of the program? Yeah. I know. But But I think it's the so if you're not teaching, and this goes back to to, I mean, it goes back to what I did in my, in my graduate studies, was that when you're not teaching people the basics of of science literacy, of research, interpretation and applications. Yeah, you're not. And you don't teach people about the Knowledge Translation From Research to Practice. Like when those basic fundamentals aren't taught, they are never learned. Yeah. So there are colleges saying we need to be evidence informed. And our approach, we need to include research and credible publishing information. But when that information isn't presented to people are taught to people in schools, they come up, how are they supposed to learn it? Are they gonna go take a course that teaches them how to read and interpret and understand the scientific paper? Not many. So when it feels to me when I read that, when I hear this, and I read this, I think, yes, this is great, we should be using an evidence for approach in our work. But what how do we know what's evidence for evidence based, if we're not taught, you don't know what you don't know, you don't know what you don't know. And you can obviously you can version A lot of us to learn it on our own. But that's, that's a self self regulating, self regulated thing. So I would almost like to see a 16th point was, which was like, learn how to do or how to understand research.
Jamie Johnston:But see that therein lies the problem, because like, just to expand on what you're talking about, not only will people likely not come out and want to take the course, they won't know that they should take the course, because they've never been taught it. And it goes back to I don't know if we were talking about it on a podcast or where I was talking about it recently. But we're, we're primed from college, to believe that we should constantly take technique horses, because we've learned more technique courses in school than we do about therapeutic exercise or research or any of those things. So now, if the research component isn't even there, but you've been taught five technique courses, you're going to come out thinking the best thing I can do to help people is take more technique courses, right? Because that's what's been ingrained in you in school. So not only will people come out and possibly not want to, but they won't think that they need to, because there's never been any seed of importance placed on that. Yeah, that's sad. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember when I did my case study, I got ripped apart. Because the research I used was terrible. Yeah. Which is good, because that showed me, Hey, you did a shit job on the research end of this, so you need to improve on that. Yeah. But now, how, how could they grade somebody on that if they're not even teaching a research course?
Eric Purves:There's big holes in all of this. Yeah, but the idea is good. So hopefully there will be a little more. Maybe we can do it. Hopefully there'll be some more updates on information. Maybe we can do like a follow up podcast on it. Yeah, maybe they explain a bit more detail. Right? Yeah. Because it also so so if the next point, which I thought was, which was great, which is really relevant to all of this, which is practicing the self reflective manner, you regularly take time to consciously think about your practice, and to analyze your decisions and their impact, you obtain feedback from others, and you draw an external on external information to continuously improve your professional capacity and performance. This is very closely related to evidence informed evidence based practice, which is great to analyze your decisions and their impact. And it's funny, like self reflection is something that they do not teach routinely in massage schools, at least far the conversations I've had with educators and schools and new grads, but it's something that you see in all higher level university education. Okay, graduate studies, you know, masters, PhD studies, is that self reflective, so basically, how do you know what you know? And, and why do you do what you do? And why do you think the way you think, and why did you make that decision? Why did you say this thing? And really, it allows you to focus, you just stop and think about, and like your decision making? And, and when you stop and think about it sometimes. Like why I did this thing? I said this thing? Because I read it somewhere, and I thought it sounded relevant for this person. Maybe that's why, or maybe it's because you read a paper on it. Or maybe it's because you're like, I have no idea. This just felt like the right thing. But I think it's really important for us to, to develop our Alexander professional capacity and performance by stopping and thinking and reflecting on our knowledge and why it is we make the decisions we do. Cool. I really liked that. Like that. One for me is one of my favorites from this and something that I would love it. This is me throwing this out there to the universe. I would love it if there was if that was something that they started teaching self reflection in massage school, I think it would drive students crazy, because they probably have no idea what you're talking about how important it is. But I think it would be really, really important. I know I did it when we did in my graduate studies, like almost everything we did was we had to do these like self reflective journaling and stuff, which was super annoying at the time. But then once you kind of get into it, you're you realize how important it is? Because you're like, oh, that's why I think that's why I said this thing,
Jamie Johnston:but just started journaling this week.
Eric Purves:Oh, it's really important. I feel it's really important. And I know I'm not the only one because it seems to be a common theme. And
Jamie Johnston:but I think and this might be a really good way to wrap this podcast up. But if we look at the unless there was other points you wanted to make? No, this is this. This is this has been a good one. I think I think if we look at the end of that practice, in a self reflecting matter, what it says is you draw on external information to continually improve your professional capacity and performance. So that in itself, is shows us that it's your responsibility to continually improve, not to look at this and go, Oh, we don't have to take CSCs anymore. This is the onus is on you to continually improve and be a professional. Because when we look at the other healthcare professionals, especially if we look at doctors, nurses, OTs, physios, Cairo's, like all these other ones, all of them, they may have the same idea where it's a self paced thing. But they are required to take continuing education and our college is putting the responsibility on us to be a professional and to perform in a professional capacity by continuing to upgrade our knowledge and information that we use in our practice.
Eric Purves:Yeah, it's very, it's very, it's very important. And I think if we want to maintain our credibility if we want to realize our true potential, and we follow these career span competencies, and individual arm T's take it upon themselves to really take charge of what they learn and how they progresses as a profession. I think this is a very is a positive direction forward. And I think we said we start off the podcast with is from a business perspective, having the minimum C C's was great. But as a profession, we do know that that doesn't really help people. Yeah. Because people will just take stuff just for the sake of taking stuff. Whereas this is something that's a little more probably be more time consuming. If you do it properly, because you have to create a plan and you have to engage and you have to reflect and you have to do all right All these things, too. And then you have to show how you have met these goals that you've chosen for yourself. And maybe that's courses made it's workshops, and it's conferences, maybe that's whatever, whatever. Yeah, I think it could be better. And I'm going to maintain a healthy level of optimism. But there's going to be a definitely have a little a little bit of skepticism in there as well.
Jamie Johnston:Absolutely. And really, we should have skepticism with with everything that we do. So there's nothing wrong with having that healthy level of skepticism. So I think until next time, thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next podcast. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. These kinds of topics are what we are all about. If you'd like to learn more, go to our websites, the mtdc.com or Eric purvis.com. If you know of any other therapists that could benefit from this, please tell them to subscribe