short course finished on Friday and I know that I speak for all of the COPE staff when I say Hallelujah! If I didn't appreciate all the work behind the scenes of international conferences before, I surely do now.
Luckily, this conference was on something I have a strong interest in and investment in teaching the local staff and learning myself. So I was invested in the conference well beyond just making sure the logistics came together on cue. I did my best to work with the presenters to ensure that their topics fit the developing country context and were appropriately targeted to reach the majority of the audience. I think this was the difficult aspect of the conference and while I do fear that a large amount of the information was well above the Lao staff comprehension, overall I think there were a lot of good take home points.
For me, the most important part were the hands-on sessions that happened Thursday and Friday. The P&Os had four cerebral palsy patients who needed AFOs. The 28 participants were split into 6 groups and every group casted a patient. The two instructors, Roy Bowers and Karyn Ross, also casted patients as demonstrations. Roy and Karyn are two P&O instructors from Strathclyde University in Glasgow Scotland. They both have immense experience in CP orthotic treatment and have some strong opinions about methods.
While I don't feel like anything they discussed was new to me, it was a great refresher and a great discussion of one particular method of approach. My colleague, Temali, a Paeds PT, and I plan to follow up with another training in early Oct to review the lessons taught and have the participants revisit their new skills.
What an achievment!
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