What’s going on? I hope everyone has had a great week!
This week we took our final for Orthotic management of the lower limb 2. We also finished our KAFO project on Monday and yes, I will show you a picture of my KAFO now that it is finished. It’s not my best work, but I am proud of the progress. We started the new class Orthotic management for the upper limb, which will be our last orthotics class before our cumulative orthotic exam, which I am super nervous about. We also started our first project which is making a WHO wrist hand orthosis. Because I have only known about casting the lower limb, casting the upper limb was a bit of a challenge. But I got it! On Friday, we practiced casting for AFOs again which was well needed! Things this semester are moving at a faster pace and on top of that, studying, and looking for residencies are overwhelming. But let’s keep this thang moving!
Special Thanks to Andrew Learned from the House of Representatives for taking the time to Visit IIOP to Learn about the O & P Profession, along with getting the chance to meet all of our students.
Andrew was born in Sarasota, grew up in Valrico, and graduated High School in Fort Myers before enrolling at the University of Tampa. There, he studied economics, and government and world affairs in addition to his duties in the Navy ROTC program. During his junior year, Andrew was elected as the Student Body President and served as Company Commander for his Navy ROTC unit.
While at UT, Andrew took internship opportunities with County Commissioners Mark Sharpe and Kevin Beckner, where he learned the ins-and-outs of local government.
After graduation, Andrew commissioned as an officer into the United States Navy, serving on active duty for four years. He was a Surface Warfare Officer who specialized as his ship’s Boarding Officer. In that role, Andrew led small teams on boarding operations throughout two deployments to the Middle East and North Africa. In 2014, as a Lieutenant, Andrew transitioned to the United States Navy Reserves.
When Andrew returned home, he sold his home and maxed out his credit cards to open a neighborhood learning center called GradePower Learning. His location has since become the #1 new franchise in the 140-center-strong Oxford Learning family and won the President’s Award the following year for being #1 overall. Andrew has also been personally recognized by the Tampa Bay Business Journal in 2014 as an Up & Comer Under 30.
In 2016, Andrew returned to active service with the Navy to be the Lead Surface Planner for Commander Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade forward deployed to Bahrain. During this deployment, Andrew led surface coordination efforts during the crisis in the Bab-Al-Mandeb, when Huthi rebels were firing missiles at US and Coalition warships in the strategic choke-point. Andrew worked to protect and defend dozens of merchant shipping transits every day, thereby ensuring freedom of navigation for all friendly and neutral forces. For his efforts and service, Andrew received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal.
Andrew was elected to the Florida House in November of 2020. He’s married to his college sweetheart Amanda and has twin 8-year-olds Flynn and Lola keeping him on his toes.
Hello everyone! Hope everyone is staying healthy and enjoying their week!
This week was full of fun educational activities that allowed us to put our newly learned knowledge to use. Tuesday we were given a pathology research article to read, take notes, critique, and then present what we learned about the article to the class on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were fun filled days of clinical gait analysis where we learned the gait cycle focusing on the knee and ankle complex. In lab this week we analyzed our peers’ gaits and recorded their temporal and spatial data. I am looking forward to the next couple weeks where we finish learning the hip complex of the gait cycle and we get to present our findings on our partners!
We met and were introduced to a new faculty member, Mr. Martin, who is very knowledgeable in O&P. Additionally, we were introduced to the District Florida House Representative who was touring our school and learning about what we do in our profession. I found it very cool that my school is trying to raise awareness of our profession and what we do to help patients.
Check back next week for more and have a great weekend!
What’s happening peoples! I hope everyone is enjoying all the good things in life!
As the countdown to graduation has begun, things are speeding up, the projects are becoming more challenging and topics that were reviewed in the beginning are coming back. However, there is no fear because we got this. We came into this program knowing what we want to do, why, and how to achieve it.
This week, we started our KAFOs which so far has been the most challenging project. Casting the patient’s leg requires two people. Both the practitioner and assistant are needed to hold the ankle and knee joints in place and to hold the leg up to smooth out the medial and lateral side of the leg. Everyone has done a great job with it so far! Next was modifications of the leg and phew… the legs from the thigh to the foot require a lot of modifications in order for it to become at least close to perfect. I found myself sweating bullets! It was still fun though. By the 4th semester, modifications become easier, and you find or create your own way of modifying and smoothing out the plaster.
So far, we completed our negative impressions of our patient’s legs, mixed plaster to create the molds, modified them and pulled the plastic over them. Be back next week for more. Bye!
The long weekend with Labor Day off allowed me and many other students to connect outside of class and get to know each other and our new city! But by Tuesday we were back to reality and expanding our knowledge in Anatomy, Pathology, and applied clinical neuroanatomy. Even though there were a lot of hours of lecture this week our professors did a great job of incorporating activities within the lectures to keep us engaged in the material the entire lecture period. Additionally, this week we were able to shadow the 4th semester students while they were practicing KFO casting which was interesting to see and look forward to where we will be in just 3 semesters! Lots of studying was accomplished over the weekend and now we are back at it this week with a full week of lecture and labs!
Hiya! Back at it again with the weekly O&P blog updates! I hope everyone is enjoying the 3-day weekend and Labor Day!
This week was midterm week! As some may know, after the first semester, we have block classes meaning one class at a time. Which also means that midterm arrives after the first few days (or one week) of class(es). And right now, we are taking Orthotic management of the lower limb 2. This week, we learned about different types of prefabricated Knee, Hip, and Fracture orthosis. There are so many different types of orthoses but it’s nice to learn about the prefab kinds because it helps me put them into categories and determine which one is better for the patient depending on their pathology. This week we also had lectures and discussed orthotic treatments and goals for TBI in addition to orthotic treatments for CP. Then we had our midterm on Friday. Flashcards are your best friend, peoples! I love that everything is starting to come together, and I am becoming more accustomed to the terminology, treatment plans, and decision-making skills that will be needed in the O&P world.
Hello everyone! I am a part of the new cohort at IIOP which happens to be the first class of 24 students! I am originally from Ohio so moving to Florida was definitely a change, but I have been loving every second of it.
I wanted to start off by sharing something about myself I wondered all the time during undergrad: how did the people around me decide to go into their desired field and what lead them to where they are today? Personally, I found out about the Orthotics and Prosthetics field during quarantine in 2020 while I was finishing my Biomedical Engineering degree at The Ohio State University. I began researching Master’s Degrees with a BME degree and was not really finding anything that I thought would fit me. I wanted to find a profession where I could be crafty, work with my hands, design, and help change people’s lives. This led me to think of why I chose BME in the first place: to build artificial organs or artificial limbs. I did not know exactly how I could get to that point until I reached my junior year of college where I realized with the help of research and professors that there was a field dedicated to artificial limbs called “Orthotics and Prosthetics.” Once I discovered this, I quickly began researching all the orthotic and prosthetic fields in the Columbus, Ohio area so I could begin learning and seeing if this was the best fit for me. After the first day of shadowing a CPO I knew that this was the career for me. It included everything I wanted in my future profession: allowing me to work with my hands, being crafty, designing, and helping change people’s lives. From there all I had to do was type in “Master’s Programs” and a few clicks led me here to my beautiful school, IIOP in Tampa, Florida!
Our cohort started this fall on August 23, 2021. The classes we are in this semester involve Human Anatomy & Physiology, Applied Clinical Neuroanatomy, Introduction to Pathology, and Clinical Gait Analysis. Even though the course work seems slightly overwhelming right now, I know gaining all this invaluable information will be worth it down the road. I can already tell IIOP was the perfect place for me because the professors are so knowledgeable, helpful, and accommodating towards answering questions any time of the day with average response times of mere minutes… combine that with the palm trees and you just can’t beat it for grad school.
Czesc! Meaning “hello” in Polish. I hope everyone had a great summer! This summer was so fun and productive but now it is back to business. This is my last semester at IIOP, and I am so excited to get into the real world of Orthotics and Prosthetics soon. Not really too hyped about my exams but I will have confidence!
Because this is the last semester, I am expecting the classes to go full speed, which so far, it has. Going into lower limb orthotics part 2 which discusses orthotics above the knee, we talked about KAFOs and components. A lot of topics are review, but they were reviews that were needed because the summer did feel a bit long. We fabricated and modified our first Ground Reaction AFOs (GRAFOs), which were a success! I was happy with the way mine turned out. During our next class, we went over the passive, active and manual muscle testing, which was also great review.
I am expecting this semester to go well since I learned a lot during my clinical rotations, and I hope that I can continue to finish strong. Wish me luck! Adaeze Mbagwu
My name is Ian Reyes, aka DJD, aka Moneybags of SGA, aka Miguel Kings, and I’ll be writing the blog post for the month of July.
Joining me will be Rene Respicio, aka Dr. RESPECT, and Peter Marx, aka the better Marx Brother! El Presidente, Jacob Sliman, has no further comments at this time as he’s dealing with matters of (inter)national security (Student Government has been busy).
I: Soooo let’s take a recap of what we’ve been up to here at IIOP! We kicked off the month with a fantastic fourth of July. Some of us went home to our families and watched fireworks from the beach, like Savanna, while others got to stay here and watch fireworks in the middle of downtown Tampa:
I: Following our brief respite, we tackled our custom spinal orthotics courseware. We learned how to do our Cobb angles and set up our blueprints for custom orthotics with x-rays. We even made videos for ourselves so we have a record of how to do Cobb angles in the future. Mine took about 12 minutes, Savanna’s was about 20 minutes long, and Peter was able to get all the information in with a whopping 90 min long.
P: Yeah my phone almost died while recording, but I got it done! Check it out on my YouTube channel instead of watching a movie sometime.
R: Making videos is a great way to quickly revisit important topics months later. You’ll thank yourself when you start studying for boards!
I: Ms. Crawford had to watch all of our videos though so she’s the real winner here because she got to learn the material 5x over!
After learning how to blueprint, we got to use the 3D scanner and scanned our torsos into a 3D program to create models for our custom bivalve spinal orthotics orthoses. Then we got to use a 3D carving machine to create the models out of foam. The foam, when cut, kind of looks like parmesan, but it also definitely gets EVERYWHERE like parmesan. It can make you itch so word of warning to anyone who will use that foam in the future.
R: Note, it does NOT taste like parmesan. Be careful breathing this stuff in folks!
P: Also, if while editing your 3D scan in the OMEGA software you decide to jokingly make some unrealistic changes, be sure to remove said changes before carving your foam!
I: After the molds were finished, we got to pull polyethylene plastic over the molds, where we definitely got tanned by the ovens. I swear the cotton stockinette smells like gingerbread once it’s been heated a while, but it’s something you have to experience to believe.
P: I personally think the stockinette smelled more like pizza dough fresh out the oven but to each their own.
R: In my opinion, everyone’s TLSOs turned out amazing! It’s weird seeing my own mold. You could say it’s like an out-of-body experience 😀 As a bonus, we all ended up sewing our straps. Feel free to enjoy our creative direction in the photo-op attached.
I: We got to make our TLSO’s for each other but we treated it as if we were not going to see our patients until the delivery. We sewed our own straps for extra credit and went off our measurement sheets to make modifications. I’ll tell you what: we definitely had a blast once we finally got it all right!
Here’s our group mugshot:
Rene lookin’ like a savage #BadBackBois
I: Once we finished spinal, we finally started our first prosthetics class! Starting with lower limbs, we started learning about prosthetic leg components and feet. We even had a competition on removing a prosthetic foot out of a foot shell. The foot had to be removed with a shoehorn and had to be fully removed and then re-inserted. Rene had a rough start, kicking us off at 2 min and 41, but after her third attempt, she blazed through it sitting just under 10 seconds. I actually came in last place, at about 11 seconds (I got disqualified during my second attempt because the foot wasn’t all the way into the shell, but I would also have been around 9 seconds). The fastest two were Savanna and Peter, who settled the score with a sudden death match since they were both so close to each other after the third round. In the end, though, Savanna took home the gold with 7.11 seconds and won 4 pieces of chocolate.
And that pretty much brought us to the end of July. It feels like it was forever ago since I’m writing this 2 weeks into August. Time’s been flying fast and I can’t believe we’re almost done with our second semester. We’ve done a lot this month already, too, but I’ll let the Queen of Speed retake her final blog post for August. Tune in next time and thanks for bearing with us! Moneybags out!
I know I have said it before, but wow it is flying by. Last time I did this blog was roughly a month ago and I wrapped it up with talking about receiving our white coats. Thinking about that today, it feels like it happened a year ago. We learn so much and do so much hands-on work within these classes that it has all just kind of become one large moment in my head with absolutely no timeline.
This week though, we finished our third class: Orthotic Management of Lower Limb 1. Throughout these four weeks, my classmates and I made accommodative FOs, UCBLs, AFOs, Articulating AFOs, and even got a sweet little Zoom call with Becker. The best part about having the opportunity to makes these devices for one another is that we actually get the opportunity to understand how these devices feel. This gives us the ability to relate just a bit to our future patients and understand different pressure points, etc., that they may be feeling. Also, huge shout out to all those technicians out there. I am not sure I will ever be able to wrap my mind around how quickly you guys turn over devices. Granted, this was the first time I have ever made any type of Ox, but it took us close to 2-3 days each!! I can only hope one day I look back and have a good laugh at how rough my first AFO came out. But on the bright side, I can only go up from here.
We now have begun our Spinal management class that will continue on for the next three weeks. While we have had some pretty hefty lecture material, we did start fitting one another with COs, CTOs, TLSOs, and LSOs. After trying them on and fitting my classmates in them, I have an even greater understanding of how well those suckers work when patients use them correctly. Being so restricted with some devices was tough! I can only imagine having to wear those devices 6 plus weeks. With this class being only about three weeks though, we already have our midterm creeping up around the corner. As always, keep us in your thoughts as we take our tests!!
