Letter from Don

Frequently, I travel to interesting places to teach casting and brace selection workshops to groups of practitioners. In the last few months I have been to Meridian, Mississippi; Richmond, Virginia; Lubbock, Texas; and to the Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati.

Our two-day basic course has evolved over the years. It is now more precise, substantive and clear. Course content includes a variety of topics that we believe are valuable to those in the field. Subjects include biomechanical assessment skills, development of brace selection skills, the study of intensive case histories, and a hands-on practicum in casting.

Although we believe the course content is rich in relevance, we continue to field questions during the course about the availability of more in-depth teachings, or specific issues with challenging patients. It occurs to me that maybe many of you are not aware that we can customize the content to fit the needs of your practice. Formats can be developed that may be more applicable to your unique settings and patient population.

With advance notice, a Cascade instructor can come to your facility with a structured, custom workshop for your entire staff such as a refresher course or an in depth session on a select number of topics of your choice. The instructor can show more patient videos, discuss more case histories or even add on a day where you can bring in some challenging patients for an on site in-service.

A custom course might go in depth on managing more challenging DAFO applications. Many of you work with patients that are not correctable in their feet, or are very high tone. Maybe the patients have sensitive skin or there are specific challenges for the caregivers in working with the braces. The course could focus on selecting the appropriate style of brace for some of these more challenging circumstances, and then show different choices for optimizing the brace to ensure greatest benefit for the patients.

Orthotists often ask Cascade to teach a workshop for physical therapists that they work with, who act as advisors for brace selection but do not do the actual casting. This has been valuable for educating the physical therapists about some bracing issues, which then makes the work between the orthotist and therapist more synergistic, and ultimately provides the patient with a more appropriate, better fitting brace.

I just thought you might want to know—we are happy to customize our courses to be sure you get the value you need for your unique settings and practices.

-- Don Buethorn

Don Buethorn, CPO, is founder-owner of Cascade Dafo, Inc., and Cascade Prosthetics and Orthotics.

Cascade has four instructors who are practicing clinicians, with extensive training and hands-on experience with dynamic bracing and mobility challenges. Our courses are certified for continuing education units. Email or call Karen in our education department for any questions or to arrange a workshop in your area: 1.800.848.7332 ext. 218.