Mapping the OMPT Education Continuum with Dr. Matthew Smith

We'd like to talk today about your ongoing study titled Mapping the Continuum, Enhancing Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy Education Through Instruction and Training.

But first, I wanted to hear a little bit about your clinical and research pathway that led you to develop your expertise here.

So what was it that sparked this interest?

Yeah, I think this interest was sparked kind of three different ways.

First was my own clinical training.

I really valued what OMPT, what my training brought me and bringing clinical reasoning as a core principle for myself and my practice versus just technique execution, right? Like going through the whole clinical reasoning process.

And I don't think we've always done a great job, maybe as a profession, of giving others that access that maybe don't have the means or the time or the thought to go and continue that training.

So really, I wanted to try and expand the reach of that OMPT framework.

And I think no better way than with a DPT and residency training and kind of marrying some of those.

And also the transfer... of those principles to things outside of orthopedics.

Because I know in my clinical time, mentoring students and other professionals, I've had people reach back out and say, you know, that methodology we used when I was a student, which they may or may not have known at the time was kind of the OMPT type framework.

has served me well in acute care or my CVP, neuro, all of those different practice fields.

So I just think that it has a wide applicability and I wanted to make sure and try to share that.

And then the other thing was the qualitative aspect, which I think is pretty unique to manual therapy type investigations.

And that is because I just really am more interested in in the why and the how that people have versus just a simple binary yes or no.

And that started more when I was doing my research at Bellin College, completing my doctor science there.

And I think I can key into the one time where qualitative research really became something that I thought I could be more passionate about.

And I was interviewing a clinician And to frame it, the survey question might be, did you refer to an outside provider? Yes or no? However, in talking to that person, I found that they were treating a patient and the patient said that they had had a previous wonderful experience with another PT provider that they credited for a lot of their positive experience.

And the current treating physical therapist said, went and found that therapist who luckily was still in the same network or the same organization that their therapist was at, but at a different location and coordinated between the patient and that therapist for them to continue their relationship and their care because the current treating therapist recognized how important that relationship was to the patient.

So to me, that really brought full circle of that story and that understanding of is way more powerful than did you did you refer to another therapist? Yes.

Right.

So that is really what inspired me to really get into that discussion with people versus just a yes or no on a sheet.

Yeah, I agree.