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Resident Council President’s Message

John Lavelle, DO

Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. What does this mean to our osteopathic physical medicine and rehabilitation residents?

Do the values that A.T. Still founded our great profession on, still reverberate within their minds as they are inundated with patients suffering from spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries and back pain?

Dr. Still’s principles are ideals the entire healthcare field appears to be trying to embrace. He believed that our body systems are interrelated and dependent upon one another to maintain health. Put simply, he believed in preventative medicine, which is a common buzzword all over the mainstream media today. He felt that by maintaining the body in its proper alignment, its function would improve and the body could maintain health- structure and function are interrelated. He wanted physicians to consider the whole person, not just the area of pain or injury. This included the mind or brain. Today, pain management is realizing this as it is beginning to focus on how the brain plays a major function in chronic pain. The physiology of the brain changes in patients in chronic pain and affects patient’s perception of pain. Furthermore, Dr. Still taught that treating dysfunction in one area of the body could affect others. Now, we have the knowledge of neural pathway connections through interneurons allowing unrelated pathways to communicate leading to such entities as right shoulder pain due to cholecystitis and central sensitization. Dr. Still might have had it right, when he advocated for treating the body, mind and spirit. He felt that by achieving harmony within all aspects of the body, health would be achieved or maintained.

If these principles of Dr. Still’s Osteopathic medicine are becoming popularized within healthcare today, why are we not embracing this and providing the necessary education to our osteopathic residents?

Many of the osteopathic residents I have encountered during my past eight months as president of the AOCPMR Resident Council have commented on the lack of osteopathic education during residency. They desire to implement the principles of osteopathy and the diagnostic and treatment techniques learned during their four years of osteopathic medical school training. However, many, without the availability of mentors and courses to continually educate them and enhance their understanding, do not maintain their osteopathic skills.

This is where the AOCPMR Resident Council, and the college as a whole, can embrace this opportunity to fill a void in resident education. Providing residents with this osteopathic approach to physiatry and fostering their knowledge on how to become an osteopathic physiatrist would provide the value residents look for when deciding to commit their precious little free time outside the wards.

This training of physiatric residents into truly osteopathic physiatrists would help fill a gap in their education and a gap in they current field of healthcare as these resident go on to practice and serve.

Sincerely,

John Lavelle, DO
President, AOCPMR Resident Council Executive Committee