Creating the CSULB AAOMPT Student Local Program: A story by Class of 2019 President James Cox

Hello, my name is James and I am nearing the end of my 1st year as a CSULB PT student! Though school has been quite challenging, it has offered me tremendous clinical and professional growth opportunities. In late February, our department chair, Dr. Cormack, forwarded an email to me about the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists (AAOMPT) and the AAOMPT Student Local Program (ASL). ASL is essentially a program that increases awareness and implementation of manual therapy principles in an active learning environment to promote individual clinical decision making. To me, it sounded like an outstanding chance to learn and practice important skills that are particularly useful in our profession.

My classmates, Christian and Alex, helped me out in registering the school as an ASL program. Once CSULB was officially registered, we had to find an AAOMPT member who would be willing to be a mentor for the group. After doing a quick and simple search in the AAOMPT member directory, we found out that our professor, Michael Miller, was a member. We were very happy when he let us know he would be willing to be a part of the group as he always offered new and interesting manual therapy techniques in the palpation lab we had taken with him.

After finding a mentor, it was time to start planning meetings. We decided to have three types of ASL meetings, mentor led, student led, or guest speaker led. Our first meeting is set to be with our mentor, Michael, and he plans on offering us some cervical spine case studies that will encourage us to think outside the box. After reasoning through the case, we will split up to practice the related manual therapy techniques.

Altogether, I think this group is going to offer a lot of great information and opportunity to sharpen our clinical skills! I’m very eager to see how ASL grows and progresses during my remaining time at Long Beach. Hope to see everyone come out!

-James Cox, SPT

#CareerAdvancement #Spring2017 #StudentLocalProgram