AOTA President Alyson Stover Is Prioritizing Pelvic Health in 2023!

Show Notes

• Epsiode 15: What I Learned From Not Getting Accepted to Speak at the AOTA Conference
• Occupation-Based Pelvic Health Community of Practice Enrollment Survey

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Transcript

Intro New and seasoned OTs are finding their calling in Pelvic health. After all, what's more adult than sex, peeing and poop? But here's the question What does it take to become a successful, fulfilled and thriving O.T. in Pelvic health? How do you go from beginner to seasons and everything in between? Those are the questions and this podcast will give you the answers. We are inspired OTs. We are out of the box OTs. We are Pelvic health OTs. I'm your host Lindsey Vestal and welcome to the OTs and Pelvic health Podcast. 

Lindsey Vestal Episode 15 on the OTs and Pelvic health podcast aired back in August, and it was titled What I Learned from Not Getting Accepted to Speak at the AOTA Conference. It is now April. 2023. This might be episode 50 or close to it, and I felt like I needed to come back on here because for those of you that attended the AOTA conference last week, I actually spoke. And so you might be wondering what's the journey here? That last episode. Episode 15 was probably one of my most raw and most vulnerable episodes to date, where I admitted that I felt like I let my community down. I let you down. I've been working since 2014 trying to get the word out that OTs can do this work that we can do. Pelvic health not only that, we can do it, but we're actually leaders. Take out the practice framework if you have any doubt. There is nothing more ADL than peeing pooping and intimacy and the amount of therapeutic rapport and integrative and lifestyle medicine skills that really go into how we can best support our pelvic floor clients leaves no room for doubt. And so you could imagine when I received my rejection from the Aota, basically saying that my proposal and that our work in Pelvic health was to biomechanical, that it wasn't OT enough. I went into a bit of a tailspin. A lot of self-doubt. A lot of self-doubt. Sally. You've heard me talk about that before. I describe for the first time on August 8th in episode 12, it was called A Day in the Life of a pediatric pelvic floor therapy therapist therapist with Chris Smith. That was when I started reframing imposter syndrome, which is basically the belief that you're not capable, that you're not ready to practice in an area that your heart and your passion aligns with. I realigned it to be called self Doubt, Sally. Now I also go into depth about that on my episode with Carlyn Nique and. You know, this is something I see over and over again. And notice, especially Ortiz and Pelvic health is this idea that we can't do it. And I definitely went into a tailspin of feeling like I wasn't able to accomplish something that I felt was really important on our national level. Now, in our OTs Pelvic health Facebook group, we have 5200 members to date. This podcast, I get a tremendous amount of support. I feel like we're making waves, but I really wanted to see those waves being made on the national level, which is why we submitted, which is why I submitted to speak. Now, there's been some wins this past year that have moved the needle forward. One of those wins was our creation of the community, a practice called the occupationally centered Pelvic health community of practice. Shout out to the team. It was an absolute team endeavor to make this happen. It was incredible. Our first meeting is coming up in May. I will put a link to how to join that in the show notes. So I felt the winds accumulating throughout this past year and I resubmitted my paper as a short course after I was rejected. I just wasn't ready to give up. I wasn't ready to give up. And so surprisingly enough, it got through. I have no idea how, but I was literally on cloud nine this past week meeting so many of the forces of nature that are proteins. I literally walked around Kansas City, even outside of the convention center, feeling the most understood I'd ever felt. Every Uber driver, every bus driver, every person in the restaurant that I encountered had known about OT either either because they themselves had had some sort of interaction or encounter with O.T., had already driven in O.T. or served in O.T. at a restaurant. And so I literally walked around in this bubble of understanding where I felt like, my gosh, I didn't have to explain what O.T. was, which I don't know about you, but that's pretty much my my normal life outside of Kansas City, outside of the AOTA unique conference. And it was beautiful. And it definitely filled my cup for me to be able to come back to where I'm living in Arizona and have to answer the question again. I'm filled up. I'm totally filled up. I'm totally lit. But I want to tell you about something else that happened that really shifted my mindset regarding where the future is going for OTs and Pelvic health in 2023 and more importantly, through the term that our new president, Alison Stover, has her sights set on. Well, amazing breaking news. Our President is prioritizing pelvic health throughout her term and I cannot wait to tell you how I discovered this. So back in October of 2022, I spoke at our local state conference in Arizona. Where I met Allison Stover. She attended my talk. Much to my surprise, I had no idea. I'm really glad I didn't know until afterwards, because it was the first time I spoke in person since returning from living in Paris the last three years. And had I known that our president was in the audience, let's just say I would have had even more self-doubt. Sally. So she came up to me afterwards and said, Listen, I'm starting this tour where I'm speaking with people at various conferences and gaining an appreciation and understanding of their journey and this emerging area of practice that you're in. Can we chat afterwards? And I was like, Yeah, let's do that. It would be amazing. So she and her amazing husband recorded a short interview with me, and I wasn't sure exactly what it was going to be used for, but I received some communication from AOTA later that said they were going to be playing it during her presidential address at our national conference. Surreal doesn't begin to describe it. I walked into the conference center space where the keynote was played, and it's this huge space. It's it's vacuous. I mean, it's just it's a little overwhelming. The ceilings are super tall. It's just it can accommodate a ton of people. Well, there are about 7000 OTs who attended this conference. And I was sitting in the front row next to some other amazing OTs that Alison interviewed. And right next to us were former AOTA presidents. Talk about self doubt, Sally. My goodness. I was sitting in this front row watching my interview playing to 7000 OTs, reminding myself of the incredible roller coaster journey that I've had this past year. Going from paper, being rejected to being accepted to talking to. Having the privilege of speaking with the president on the local state level to now being at our national conference in the front row, having my interview play around why I know OTs truly belong in Pelvic health. I. I think I'm still reeling in the surreal nature of this. And I need to back up a moment and tell you that this is not the first time that I have felt the rejection or the doubt or the questioning. Because in grad school I had a professor. Believe it or not, it was an emerging practice area lab. The professor that ran this also questioned also said, Isn't this just for PTs? It was actually the same year that our journal published an article called, You know, OTs and Our Role in Incontinence. So, you know, I talked about this on another episode. I walked in and I showed her the journal and I said, I really want to have my project center on this. Well, it's hard to just say no when the journal cover pages showing a not working in this area. But I definitely had to fight that. And then I heard it again in probably a dozen different job interviews. I have heard it among many colleagues on social media. I could go on and on and on. And quite frankly, my friends, on the bit over being the underdog. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt like I am fighting the good fight here? I can see this so clearly. Our role in Pelvic health is to me is is so obvious that it's it still shocks me that we're fighting, that we're still having to over explain ourselves. So you better believe that when the president told me that one of her top three priorities throughout her term was pelvic health, I was shocked. I was shocked. And so I felt so seen. I felt so heard on behalf of our community. I felt like this is exactly what we need to move the needle forward and to stop second guessing ourselves. When we second guess ourselves, the world second guesses us. So the other amazing thing that happened at the conference was that my talk was over capacity. So before they knew it, there were people lining all three walkways of my talk, including the center walkway, where you would approach the microphone. And I think the monitors weren't expecting this. So they they kind of walked out. And when they came back in and they saw all these people sitting on the floor, which, by the way, you can catch these photos on my Instagram, which is Functional Pelvis. They quickly put up a sign that the room was overcapacity and they had to start turning people away. Luckily, they didn't kick out the people that are already lining the floors. But my goodness. What does this tell me? This tells me that this is something OTs want to learn about, want to learn about, and to think. I almost didn't get to speak at this conference. So, OTs, you're going to hear that we can't do this. You're going to hear that we don't have the orthopedic background. You're going to hear that it's not PT enough. Gosh, you're going to hear it's not OT enough. I don't know how it can be both of those things, but depending on the audience, I've heard it. But here's the thing. I truly believe the world is a better place when there's more OTs practicing pelvic health in it. And we do this one step at a time. Believe in yourself. Believe in our occupationally centered approach. It is so special when our clients feel heard, understood and empowered. And when we step into the boldness of belonging, we step into stopping to question. If we have a role, we move forward. OTs and Pelvic health are here to stay, and our movement is surging this year. We move our entire incredible profession forward. When you believe in yourself. I'm going to keep picking myself up, and I want you to do the same. OTs and Pelvic health are going to continue to rise. We're surging, we're empowered, and we are emboldened to do this work that we feel the calling to do. So let's get out there. Let's serve our clients one occupation at a time. 

Outro Thanks for listening to another episode of OTs and Pelvic health. If you haven't already, hop on to Facebook and join my group OTs for Pelvic health, where we have thousands of OTs at all stages of their pelvic health career journey. This is such an incredibly supportive community where I go live each and every week. If you love this episode, please take a screenshot of this episode on your phone and posted to IG Facebook or wherever you post your stuff and be sure to tag me and let me know why you like this episode. This will help me to create in the future what you want to hear more of. Thanks again for listening to the OTs and Pelvic health podcast.