Editor’s Note–February 2025

Later this month, members of our EDGE team will join O&P professionals from around the country—and even some from across the globe—at the Academy Annual Meeting & Symposium to learn about new techniques and technologies and clinical best practices. Adding to these conversations, in this issue we share research on the development of a prosthetic patient-preference tool, considerations for clinicians deciding to pursue a doctoral degree, the theory behind socket design approaches, and what a new president and Congress may mean for O&P.

“Patient Preferences in Prosthesis Decision-making: Driving Forward Value-based Care” discusses a project undertaken to determine the attributes patients value in choosing an upper-limb prosthesis with their providers. The next phase of the study will involve validation on a larger scale of the list of factors patients consider to develop a final decision-making tool practitioners can use with their patients.