While the coffee brewed, they gave away the farm!

I posted to the list, yesterday, my appreciation to the ABC Board for finally showing some backbone and getting out of the ——- contest with BOC.  Then they turned around and showed what a no class Board they really are.  With the announcement, yesterday, by Lance Hoxley, that ABC was inviting all BOC certifees to join ABC, they have just turned into the wind.  With that move, they will collectively end up wet and smelling bad.

ABC is not, was not and never should become a membership society.  It is a credentialing organization.  Yes, by virtue of its bylaws, it has the ability to recognize other credentials and to grant equal status if it sees fit.  Thankfully, (if you can believe anything that Don Fedder says) ABC wanted to establish what seems to me to be a proper order of rank after the merger. 

 ABC has just opened the door for its ultimate demise as the gold standard of O & P credentials.  Those who are involved with the Academy and NCOPE have just been handed the ball.  My hope is that collectively, they have the courage to run with it and not fumble it back to either ABC or BOC.  Neither of those Boards have either the mental capacity or the backbone to step up and meet the challenge. 

The real issue in this mess is education or lack thereof.  The lack thereof that I’m referring to is ours, not theirs.  We have collectively sat on our hands or when not sitting on them, we’ve stood around wringing them and crying, Oh, woe is me.

Long before there was a BOC, people in O&P were complaining about the requirements that kept being changed and they were unable to keep up with the changes, yet others kept being educated and certified.  How many times did we back off from the requirement for a Baccalaureate? 

 I believe this lack of education, on our part, is what has failed to set us apart from the wannabes.  I am on record as having proposed to the Academy that further educational credentials are what will best serve this field.  AND it will be of huge benefit to the patients/clients/consumers that we serve. 

In order to achieve a true separation of real O&P practitioners from wannabes, we need to achieve a level of education that is truly recognized by the entire public.  I’m not talking about a Master’s either. 

As orthotists/prosthetists, many of us have skills in our specialty that rival those of Optometrists, in their specialty.  We currently spend just one year less than they do to become qualified to hang a shingle, yet we get a Board Certification and they get a Doctor of Optometry.  They examine eyes for vision, prescribe lenses and many dispense glasses and contact lenses.  Some have their own labs and some use outside lab services. Can anyone see a resemblance of  skill sets?  With further, in depth, educational experience we could exploit our patient management skills to the benefit of the public and ourselves.  It seems to me that the one extra year would pay huge divid!
ends and not just in dollars.  It would establish credibility that our education is real and not something that can be gotten by OJT.  It would help to curtail encroachment by other, educated fields, as our education would be equal or greater (read PT/OT).

This merger circus can be and should be the defining moment in the history of O&P.  We can set the course of that history or we can let the Don Fedders of the world set it for us. We can merge with BOC and then hang out, waiting for the next Don Fedder to come down the pike.  If we do that enough times, we will really be consolidated and have plenty of voices to be heard on Capitol Hill.  The problem that I foresee is that with each consolidation, fewer and fewer of those voices will be ABC voices.

Jim Fenton