The Committee on Accreditation of Pedorthic Education (CAPE) and the National Commission on Orthotic and Prosthetic Education (NCOPE) would like to make the pedorthic and O&P community aware of some serious inaccuracies in the November 2010 issue of The O&P Edge and the article title “The Pedorthist Education Debate – All Those in Favor of the Proposed Two-Year Degree Requirement?”
First and foremost is the glaring omission of any information and/or quotes from a CAPE and/or NCOPE representative – which could have aided in not having an article published with serious inaccuracies. The inaccuracies are as follows:
1. First sentence of the article as well as the title of the article: “The proposed two-year degree requirement for pedorthist certification is a prevailing political hot button.” The standards/education level is not a proposed two year requirement. It is the award of a certificate (more than likely a one year certificate although programs may design it around an Associate’s degree if they choose). You can reference the actual standards from the public comment survey that will end Nov. 20th (the survey went live Oct. 20th and is open for 30 days). The link to the survey is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SQSYRFT
The proposed standard that identifies what the minimum award will be is question five and it reads: 5. I. Sponsorship A. Sponsoring Educational Institution A sponsoring institution must be a post-secondary academic institution accredited by an institutional accrediting agency that is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and must be authorized under applicable law or other acceptable authority to provide a post-secondary program, which awards a minimum of a certificate at the completion of the program.
2. Page 35 in the magazine – top paragraph: “As mandated by the National Commission on Orthotic and Prosthetic Education (NCOPE), the credential requires an additional 1,000 unpaid hands-on hours spent in the field under the tutelage of a practicing CPed., which translates to roughly six months of full-time labor. Once the internship is complete, the trainee sits for the state board exam and once passed, earns the credential.” This is just simply inaccurate and not a true statement.
NCOPE does not mandate 1,000 hours of unpaid experience in the proposed standards. We are not the credentialing body but the education accreditation body. Nowhere in any of our published or even proposed materials will you see that we “mandate” 1,000 hours of unpaid hands-on hours. This complete inaccuracy has caused much confession and hurt the efforts and work of NCOPE/CAPE by instilling fear to the pedorthic profession. The certifying agencies (ABC and BOC) both require 1,000 hours prior to applying for certification (a requirement since at least 2009 for ABC and 2008 for BOC) and this experience can take place before an individual’s pedorthic course or after. It needs to be pointed out that neither of the certifying agencies have in their criteria that this time is “unpaid”. It is unclear where this statement came from (although it reads as a quote/statement from Mr. Sevier) and how it got related to NCOPE specifically. You are encouraged to review both certify!
ing agencies criteria for certification and the link for ABC criteria is: http://abcop.org/certification/Pedorthists/Pages/Default.aspx
The proposed standards that deal with clinical experience state the following (which is question 15 in the open survey): 15. III. Resources 2. Clinical Experience An supervised clinical experience in a pedorthic setting, performing psychomotor and affective competencies, must be completed prior to graduation. On-site supervision of the student must be provided by an individual who has knowledge of the pedorthics profession.
What this proposed standard is requiring is that sometime during their education (a proposed certificate) the student will be required to receive some type of clinical experience and perform the competencies identified. Nowhere does it state or is it proposed 1,000 hours of unpaid training. As proposed this experience would be brief and allow the didactic/lab portion of the curriculum to have a tie in with pedorthic practice.
3. It is important to point out that the pedorthic profession had an educational summit meeting in April 2010, where all communities of interest were represented. This included a representative from each of the currently approved pedorthic programs, PFA representatives, CAPE representatives, ABC and BOC representatives and NCOPE representatives. The consensus of the group assembled was to move the pedorthic education into a credit earned/ institution of higher learning environment and out of non-credit and three week long (120 hour) course level based upon the profession’s expansion of body of knowledge and place in the health care arena. There was agreement of all in attendance that CAPE would draft proposed standards to meet the consensus identified in the report. Not one person went on record at the conference to not support the direction agreed upon at the conference. To reiterate, the conference consensus did not state that the minimum was an associate’s degree!
, but rather in environment where credit could be earned. The CAPE committee therefore has placed a draft of proposed pedorthic standards to the profession for public comment with the minimum award to be a certificate. CAPE/NCOPE encourages you to look at the report of the conference, which has been on NCOPE’s web site since June 2010. The link to the report is here: http://www.ncope.org/assets/pdfs/pedorthic_conf_report.pdf
