This past weekend I attended the 10th annual meeting of the Amputee Coalition of America. There was close to 500 amputees there who had paid their own way to learn about prosthetics and obtain information relating to their disability.
Invited and most welcome, but not present was a good representation from the profession of prosthetics. The individuals attending the national meeting, the amputees, are our clients, customers, and the people we derive our income from.
One discussion I had was on the possibility of doing a major workshop with prosthetists actually fitting amputees with some of the “new techniques and technology”. Somewhat like was done by Ossur with their casting technique and Ohio Willow Wood letting amputees try the “Pathfinder Foot” Many of you will be getting new orders (sales) for the Pathfinder Foot thanks to OWW. We also discussed the liability and payment issue of such a project, as I am sure that is on the minds of many already. One prosthetist who did attend the meeting commented to me on how many of the amputee seemed to have improved their gaits. I know that for many of the amputees this was not their first meeting and many had been refit with new prostheses and components following other ACA meetings.
I was disturbed while attending one session to hear an amputee speak about having a hard time getting past the ego of their prosthetist when trying to talk to him. Another comment came from an amputee trying to get information from someone in the exhibit area representing the industry, surprisingly “the amputee” was a prosthetist. However, on a whole most amputee seemed to be satisfied with the services being provided by the majority of us in the profession.
Why do you think there is limited representation of our profession at a meeting of consumers of our services seeking information about prosthetics. These individuals are intelligent and have the means to travel to a central point for a meeting with us, and it gives us as prosthetists the opportunity to see many of the components from our manufactures actually being used.
Respectively,
Al Pike, CP
