Jamie Johnston 0:12
You’re listening to the massage therapist Development Initiative. I’m Jamie Johnston.
Eric Purves 0:17
And I’m Eric Purves. This is a podcast by massage therapists for massage therapists.
Jamie Johnston 0:22
Our objective is to simplify how to be a more evidence informed practitioner. Let’s dig into this episode of education, education, education, I was told as a young man that you say things three times as a repetition for emphasis. However, when we look at the emphasis that is being put on our education, by many of the conferences and things that we see across across Canada, in the US and other places, all too often. We’re never learning from RMTS. And we’re not promoting other massage therapists to step up and present at these conferences, and we’re learning from people who don’t do what we do. And as we have said so many times before, we believe that that’s something that needs to drastically change within our profession.
Eric Purves 1:19
Definitely, and this is a conversation that we’ve had before in a previous one, I think we had one called RMTS, learning from RMTS. And I think it’s really important for us to, to kind of keep hammering that point home, right, the repetition, repetition, repetition, is is really is important. And, you know, the, for too long, we both believe and I can speak for myself, I won’t speak for you right now, Jamie, but we’ve looked at the professionals look outwards, right look upwards towards different health care providers, to look for leadership and to look for guidance on on, you know, things like best practices or different approaches, or, you know, the incorporating the research into practice that type of thing. But we now have, I think we’re at a time in the profession where we are at a point in time where we can, we should be taking the lead ourselves and stop looking at words. And, you know, when the I remember saying this quite a few years ago, I’m gonna say about four or five years, I was having a conversation with a colleague. And I basically said, you know, why is there not more arm T’s presenting at conferences? Why isn’t it more on T’s, teaching these continuing education courses? And the answer I got was, because there’s not really enough good quality RMTS out there. Now good quality, meaning as educators is to teach kind of current best practice type stuff. And I remember thinking, Oh, well, let’s seems to be a problem. But I never really thought about it much more than that. And the courses I took, oftentimes, were not by our own teachers, because that was what was available that we met my interest. But now we look at the amount of good quality evidence based educators out there that are starting to take the lead, we should really move towards that where we started looking to learn from within rather than looking outwards. And there is in a lot of levels, a lot of ways some of the associations are doing really well listen, some are not doing as well as we would expect.
Jamie Johnston 3:20
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we, we chatted about it a little bit before we got on but but before we get into who we’re gonna say, is doing a good job, just to add to what you were saying, the other thing that we’re starting to see is that people from some of those other professions are now coming in and challenging our exams, or they’re taking a bridge course, to become an RMT. So that they can get in to teach RMTS or massage therapists, not, you know, not just strictly, you know, people in our province, but we see, you know, some chiropractors and athletic therapists and different professions that are going in wanting to get to the title of massage therapist so that they can get into teaching massage therapists and with only that goal in mind, not to actually advance the profession and to be to be a you know, a better manual therapist or hands on therapist or anything like that. So I think we also need to look at like, okay, what are the motives behind some, some of the ones who are doing that? And is that where we should be looking for our courses?
Eric Purves 4:36
Yeah, that’s a great point, actually. Yeah. What’s the motivation for why would you want to do that? Right. So if you are, say, a chiropractor, or athletic therapist, which are I think probably the two most competitive athletic therapists probably the most common, there are
Jamie Johnston 4:48
certainly a lot more of them and many of them are doing it not necessarily become teachers but because they they don’t get the the insurance coverage and things like that like an RMT does. So they do that to you. To be able to make more money billing out,
Eric Purves 5:02
because because they’re unregulated, they don’t have like a body to advocate or for insurance. Yeah. So which makes sense, right? You’re, you know, you’ve got the your education, and you’re really great at, you know, assessment and musculoskeletal rehab stuff from like, say, being an athletic therapist, but then you can’t, you’re like, if I’m not busy, because I have people have to pay out of pocket, and they can get something maybe similar from somebody else or that person get reimbursed. So that makes sense. But I think yeah, with what you’re saying that with, with the motivation as to why I want to have this title, I want to add the RMT designation, after seeing my chiropractic for, for example, the Yeah, why are you doing that? Right, other than to maybe just try to be like, Yeah, I’m one of you as well. Yeah. But I don’t understand why somebody would want to challenge the exam. I mean, I’d like to, that’d be something I’d be very interested to hear more about that. Yeah. I was Why would you challenge the exam? If you’re just like, are you actually going to build for massage therapy, or just want to put that in your course type in your bio when you’re teaching? I don’t know. It’s, it’s an interesting thing. And I, if someone listening hasn’t answered for that be great.
Jamie Johnston 6:14
Yeah. I’m not sure. Yeah. But I think it’s still it sort of goes back to that thing is if you went and did that, just so that you can get into teaching gigs, to teach other massage therapists, then I think as people who are taking the courses, we should be analyzing that before we take the course. Because we firmly believe that the more that we can build up other people within our profession to become educators, and the more that we can learn from each other, then the better off that is for the profession. For sure, for sure.
Eric Purves 6:46
And also to uh, you almost wonder, though, hey, like, what does it say about our profession? When we can’t go challenge somebody else’s board exam unless we unless we go through their entire curriculum? Why is it? For some reason, our profession is the only one we’re like, Oh, your physiotherapist, your therapists, your chiropractor, your naturopath you’ve got you’ve got education. Okay, just right, just right, our exam if you pass it, yeah, go ahead.
Jamie Johnston 7:11
It should be mandatory that you have to go through the full program, because it’s the same with we will try to do it in another program.
Eric Purves 7:16
Yeah, I remember back when I first started looking into being a massage therapist in the late 90s, early 2000s, date myself here a little bit, I remember the guy that I used to get massage from was actually an athletic therapist, and back then you could go to, you could just challenge the exam, whenever you want it, you go to cmtbc and challenge it. And then they got rid of that for a long time. You couldn’t challenge it right? You had to go through the program. And if you made the word RMT, outside of BC, and maybe you moved here from Ontario, you could then do like a upgrade. Yeah, bridging them. There’s been a couple people in my school that were great therapists, but they had to jump through the hoops, but they went and they got licensed here. For some reason. I’m sure there’s somebody that might listen, that might know the reason why. But from a, from a logical perspective, it doesn’t make any sense. Why somebody could just come in and challenge the exam, I understand that, hey, if you’re not RMT, anywhere in Canada, you shouldn’t be able to move again, aren’t you? You’re an RMT you’ve been to school in Canada and regulated province. Education is gonna be very similar based on knowledge and very similar. Yeah, like don’t make it difficult people. But if you’re in a different profession, you’ve never actually been through a you’re not educated as a massage therapist. And you haven’t had that clinical practice, yet. Like if you’re just doing exercise rehab and, you know, spinal adjustments, and then you go and try and massage somebody. You know, and you don’t have the experience, like how many hundreds of hours you’re you’re working with your classmates and your clinic and all that stuff? I think, I don’t know, I decided to I think it doesn’t say a lot enough. It’s not a positive thing for our profession to be. Say, oh, yeah, come on in and pass the test. Here you go. Here’s your title. Absolutely.
Jamie Johnston 9:02
Because it’s funny, because I know some people who have gone to challenge the test to ask me to teach them how to drape people. Right? Because like something as simple as that, that’s so simple to us, is not something that they’ve ever done in any of those other professions. But anyways, that’s a that’s a bit of a rant about that, but I think they have changed it and you have to go and get schooling now. I don’t think you can just go in and challenge the examiner. I keep going back and forth. flip flopped. Yeah, yeah. And I think and I could be totally wrong. But I think part of the reason was because the the college would refer back to the schools. And it was the schools who said no, no, they’ve got to come and take at least our Bridging Program. Okay. Right. I think that’s how it happened. But don’t quote me on it. Because I 100% can be wrong. Yeah.
Eric Purves 9:52
We both are wrong a couple of times. Every day. Yeah, less wrong, hopefully. Yeah. So So yeah, let’s let’s Talk about some of the we just kind of preparing for this talk we had this episode, we looked through just some of the upcoming or past conferences that some of the associations put on across the country. And just, and just looking at seeing how the associations are doing in terms of who’s presenting and the kind of content that they’re they’re presenting on. And, you know, we’ll kind of I think we’ll just kind of provide some opinions and ideas about some of these things. And then maybe, you know, believe the final decision to be made by the listener about how they feel
Jamie Johnston 10:32
totally. So one of the and I’m just looking at their webpage now. But one of the things, one of the ones that we thought are doing a great job is the the RMTAO. So the Massage Therapy Association of Ontario, and if you look at the conference that they’re putting on, every single presenter is an RMT. Except for the keynote, okay, which is a doctor, okay. Which is, I mean, kind of a cool, good co host of a CBC radio show and veteran emergency room physician. That’s right up my alley is first responder. But yeah, when you look down that list, it’s all RMTS, which is great. And I wish more more associations would look at that and go, that’s what we should be doing. We should be building up the people in our profession, in our province, or state, or whatever it is, wherever you live, that we want to get these people up to show what we can do as a profession, but also to show what other people in the profession could possibly do. Because the more that we promote other RMT stepping up, and educating and educating, getting more education for themselves, and bringing that content to the rest of us. It doesn’t just benefit the profession. It benefits the general public, which is what we should all want.
Eric Purves 12:00
It’s everyone’s best interest. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I think and I think I think that the RTO is doing a much better job than they were I think they I don’t know why. But they used to only do their conferences every second year. I think they are doing them every year now. I was a presenter there in 2018, or 19. I can’t remember one of few years ago, and their keynote then was Melanie Knoll. And that was her first keynote she did for a manual therapy. Conference, first first time I encountered her so I don’t whatever was 18 or 19. Can’t remember. But then all that time to they had every single presentation there was done by RMTS. And that seems to be something consistently, you know, and then just looking through their what they have here they’re on to which, which makes me very happy to see is is they have the keynote, and it looks like they break it down into they have three different kinds of overlap, like plenary sessions, which which go all kind of at the same time, say the Business Strategy Session. They have an interprofessional collaboration session, and they have evidence based practice sessions. So pretty cool stuff really important. I think it’s really important for us as arm T’s. The only thing I don’t like about this, this this format, is that you could miss something.
Jamie Johnston 13:19
Yeah, if you’re focused on one area, you could miss out on really important information and the other one,
Eric Purves 13:25
like I’m just looking at one here, this is this is this is just my bias coming out here. But I look at it at the end of the day, they at the same time they have one working within an MBA care team for solo practitioners by Danny Felcher. We both know, but at the same time, you also got Richard Lieber doing one chronic pain evidence based person centered approach. So like, well, I find to see both of those. You couldn’t use this one. And I don’t know if this recording you get access to recordings afterwards. But I know for me, oftentimes I get recordings from things and I don’t really watch them.
Jamie Johnston 13:54
Yeah. Lost with other things. And
Eric Purves 13:57
yeah, he’s busy. So that’s the only thing I would say that is that I was like, oh, it’d be nice if it was like a two day conference. I don’t know if it’s expensive or these things are expensive. But yeah. But that you look at that you look at the content of the stuff they’re doing here, right, they’ve got, you know, stuff on and this is by no order of importance, but just looking at it here they got, you know, things that appeal to me is how to assess the impact of trauma safely. So keeping clients safe so they’re kind of trauma informed practice stuff. Mastering difficult conversations to be a great one. Be a great one right. Opening the doors to collaborative healthcare introduction evidence based practice by PCs own Bodhi who we know and then yeah, and then you have these other ones talking about the working with MBA care team and chronic pain. Which is which is great. And I bet you the Richards chronic pain when he was probably just to promote it. We just published paper together. So I’m promoting that the other day. Yeah. And I was one of the authors on that. So I’m assuming that part of the what he’s in present there is on that And that was his. That was his baby. He took the lead on that. So I think I’d like to see his presentation on that. Anyway, pretty cool stuff and RMT forward, right? Very RMT focused actually,
Jamie Johnston 15:11
especially like when you look at the title of Danny’s presentation, working within an MVA care team for solo practitioners. And I know like, how much frustration do we have especially like, when we’ve been teaching courses over the years and communicating with people where they’re like, Well, yeah, but I’ve got this person that’s come to me then they go to a Chiro then they go over to their physio, and then they go to their doctor, and they’re going to five appointments a week in all different places. So what a what a great topic of something to be like, Okay, how do I work together with these other practitioners when I’m in a silo in my own clinic or whatever? Like, very, very RMT approach?
Eric Purves 15:45
Yeah, yeah. I and this is this is great, too. And they had their panel discussions as creating an inclusive healthcare practices is another really important kind of thing that’s finally being talked about is this inclusivity and I’m just looking to see and I can’t see it off top my head here. Who is? Who is in that?
Jamie Johnston 16:05
It’s Damien John. Oh, doctor, Dr. Alex Abramovich. Hopefully I’m crucifying the gentleman’s name Sharon Davis Murdoch. Who’s a cm I don’t know what cm stands for?
Eric Purves 16:20
Yeah, I don’t know, either. And Damien, who you know, and other BC former, or as he’s still an RMT? I’m not sure. Anyway,
Jamie Johnston 16:29
I don’t think he’s practicing anymore.
Eric Purves 16:32
And then you had another person, Jessica city, who I don’t know, but you got a couple of RMTS in here. And people who look like they have kind of special focus or education or advocacy and that kind of inclusive healthcare practice, which is great. These are conversations that need to be had, and information needs to get out there. So it’s good that these things are happening. I Yeah. So I don’t really have any, I don’t have anything bad to say about that. What I do oh, well, what we’ll just keep pumping up the tires of their RMTAO do I mean, we’re not members of them? So I don’t I’ve never paid it was there anything. So I’m just going based on what we see. But also, when you look at their their website, this is really great as they have a whole thing on education and events, where you can actually add a course listing, you can you can actually make a request for them. And I know they do, I think monthly webinars available for members. So you could say, hey, you know, Jamie, you could go in there, hey, I want to do one on fear avoidance model. And why this is important for massage therapists, you could go and request for them to do that. And they would promote it. Which is to being an advocate for the profession for the members to build up the profession, to be leaders. And I love that and and we don’t see that as much unfortunately, with many of the other associations.
Jamie Johnston 17:51
Yeah. Yeah. And one thing I’ll say, too, is that they, from the things that I’ve seen, is they’ve done a really good job with their social media, promoting evidence based things and, you know, different. Not means but what am i What’s the thing I’m trying to think of? Where it’s like, like, pictographs of things that are evidence based? Yeah, like different graphics, and things like that, that are promoting evidence based practice and things and, and I know, there’s been a couple of times I’ve seen them promote something where people call that out, and they’re like, this isn’t cool. But for the most part, the things that I’ve seen, I’d say they’re doing a really good job with their social media and things.
Eric Purves 18:29
Yeah, I really liked their their social media stuff, too, I find that it’s like what they do. Okay, portion, like being with a bias of the RMT focuses, they do seem to share a lot of posts made by their members. So good quality information, good quality information, and they seem to be doing, you know, being advocates for as much as they can for their for their members. Yep. Yeah. And, you know, what I would like to see is I would like to see them do more, all Association, but I would like to see them do more of that. But also, I think we really good. I mean, these guys have money to spend, right? Like we you know, maybe we should make this statement. We are former board on the board of directors with the arm TVC. So our opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of MTV seeds, and we’ll get that out of the way. But the would be nice. And actually, I would like to see them do more like Facebook ads. Like it’s not very expensive. If you’ve got a web team to do stuff out to promote, say, Hey, here’s something that one of our members did, or here’s something that you know, a paper that was published or here’s a something that the association has done.
Jamie Johnston 19:54
Yeah. And show the benefit of what you’re the benefit of
Eric Purves 19:57
it. Because when you just make these passive posts It’s on like, you know, business page on Facebook, for any of us that use business pages on Facebook, you have to interact like on a very regular basis in order just to get it to get it built up. And in order to get it to show up people’s feeds, Facebook ads, it’ll, it’ll go to anybody. Well, and that is a massage therapist, for example, within, like you’ve been targeted, I would like to see that more so that way you could lose as RM TVC memories like, Well, yeah, what are you doing? Like, I have to go searching for it? And never, it’s never like, delivered to me.
Jamie Johnston 20:31
Yeah, well, and my opinion, too, is that every Association should have their own Facebook page. Yeah. You know, as somebody who’s a member, you can go on to that page and ask questions about your practice and get a legitimate answer from somebody within the association, whether it’s like a practice advisor, or whether it’s, you know, if you just have questions about your membership, that you can get the answers to that on that page. And it’s monitored so that people who aren’t members aren’t on that page. And it’s only delivered to the people who are members. Because, you know, there’s so many different options for Facebook pages out there that anybody can just open up a massage therapy Facebook page for their province, and you’re not necessarily getting accurate information and accurate advice, according to your practice on there. Whereas, you know, if you had a practice advisor in place, part of their job could be to log on and look at that page every day and answer whatever questions are coming in and have that discussion. So that people are getting accurate information.
Eric Purves 21:36
And I do see, I did see the other day that at least at NBC, they are actually hiring a practice advisor a full time. Job. So I don’t know why I didn’t read through it in depth. But that would be that would be ideal, right? Because what I find with the way a lot of the the association or they kind of work in this, like an older model of like, it is way things were done 20 years ago, 15 years ago with email, and you know, mail outs and stuff, but having a social media presence, in today’s day and age is what a lot of people want. And I know for me personally, like I will go on Facebook or Instagram often to look for information, or that’s where I get a lot of, you know, things that they’re looking for to find something I’ll often go there first, yeah, you see if someone’s posted, if there’s a length or something, it’d be lovely to have that as a resource.
Jamie Johnston 22:27
Only, and I mean, be able to go in, you know, if you had that practice advisor that once a week could go in and drop in a research paper and be like, Hey, here’s the paper that really applies to your practice, give this one a read. And, you know, put some bullet points in there of like, what it covers? Yeah, simple stuff like that, I think would go a long way to the user experience of the people who are members of associations.
Eric Purves 22:51
Definitely, definitely. And that would that would be that would be ideal. I think that would be that would be ideal. But yeah, I do like that the arm to come back to that point is like did a really good job of promoting good evidence based practice to the members, right. And if I think that the leadership needs to take a role in changing kind of some of these unhelpful, common narratives within the profession, we’ve talked with this probably every episode before, about, you know, the, the leadership about, you know, changing curriculums or updating best practice, or educating the profession should come from the associations, and then the associations trying to, you know, provide resources or influences to the to the school, so then that information can then be adopted and taken into the curriculum. And then you can put that upward pressure on the colleges and say that the regulatory bodies, regulatory colleges say, Hey, here’s, this is what we want to be teaching. This is consistent within our scope of practice. Let’s update Let’s Let’s update our competency documents. And I all I hear, we’ve probably talked about it was a million times, and we probably talked about it many times on the on the This podcast is pointing, what you often hear is finger pointing and excuses rather than somebody being like, Yeah, let’s do this. Yeah, there’s stakeholders to make it happen. And everyone’s like, why we’re not gonna do this on our response, but it’s their responsibility. That person says, No, it’s not my responsibility to responsibility. It’s a circle of circle. And it’s been this conversations been happening forever, right? Everyone kept blaming somebody else. And I would say, to RMTS, to be leaders of our own teams, we need our associations, we need your stakeholders, we need the colleges to take a leadership role, to promote the profession, to deliver good quality, evidence based curriculum that’s within our scope of practice. And then to use things like these conferences, to show the great work that massage therapists are doing, and promote that content and promote that content. Right, like the rmta, who’s doing a great job promoting that content. I think it’s just great.
Jamie Johnston 24:51
Which is funny because this is this is also on the outside looking in and there could be people who are rmta or members that would listen to this and go what are you talking about? They’re doing a shit job, right? Yeah, maybe differences of opinion, but this is just what we’re seeing from the outside looking at so. So yeah, props to the rmta over what we see them doing. Yeah. Yeah. However, you know, across North America also because I don’t see much in the way of like New Zealand or Australia and conferences that they do over there or if they even do them.
Eric Purves 25:25
No idea. I’m sure they do. I just it’s Yeah, but I
Jamie Johnston 25:28
just don’t see it. But you know, so I’m talking to a few friends that are AMTA members, I know that there’s, there’s a bit of a push happening in the states to get things changed around to be, you know, some more evidence-based courses and things like that. I haven’t noticed a lot about who they bring in for presenters. But but it sort of goes back to the same thing that all too often we’re relying on people who are not in the profession to be presenters at these things. And that really, really needs to change. Because how do you, you know, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t go to a mechanic and try to learn how to do an oil change, and bring in a geologist to do it. To educate you on how to do it. Yeah. So why are why are we still bringing in a different profession? To teach us how to do what we do? Right? It doesn’t make sense. No, no. And I, you know, and maybe, maybe part of this is also on us that we should be putting pressure on our associations, that, that if they’re putting a conference on, there’s individuals there who maybe every individual presenting is from out of province or out of state, or maybe, you know, half of the people presenting aren’t massage therapists, that we should be putting pressure on our associations and saying, no, stop doing that. But like, you know, and probably the biggest way to do that is by not buying tickets to a conference. But I mean, I think they usually sell out because people are getting credits and things like that, which will be interesting when we see the credit criteria change next year. But, you know, maybe the, the dollar sign is the biggest way to put pressure on them. Or maybe it’s emails and phone calls to be like, you know, we have great people who can present on this and this and this, who work within the province, why aren’t those are the ones that you’re that you’re bringing up? Or within the state or, you know, wherever, wherever it is that you live?
Eric Purves 27:46
I yeah, I think the I like we said there were the dollars and cents the money talks. Yeah. And I don’t know what membership is like another profession or another member or another. Professional associations, sorry. But I would say if your numbers are going down, or your percentages are going down, your association start to look and see why. Maybe we’re not delivering what the members want, and they’re going to put their money elsewhere. If you’re getting more a higher percentage of your of the profession is deciding to become a member, then I think that says that they’re doing good things. So when they start going down, we start looking at why is that?
Jamie Johnston 28:30
Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I don’t know how it works with the am ta down on the states. I don’t know if like, you have to be a member with them in order to maintain your license. Or if they’re an optional one, like associations are
Eric Purves 28:46
here. I think they are I just pulled up their website here and just looking to see this because they just had their their national convention just a couple days ago in Cleveland. Of all places.
Jamie Johnston 28:57
Yeah, I think, Justin, Justin Kobe Solace, I think winter that you and I were messaging the other day and mentioned that it was a
Eric Purves 29:04
good conference. Yeah, he sent me some some messages with them out in the night in the town, some pictures, and then some other people that we know, haven’t having a good time. So yeah, just looking at that there is the the mission statement of the MTA is to is to serve a MTA members while advancing the art science and practice of massage therapy. I think that sounds almost identical to the RM TBCs one and probably very similar to Ontario’s it looks like they’re they’re a nonprofit association for massage therapy profession. So that yeah, they’re just they’re not mandatory. They’re just because I think
Jamie Johnston 29:39
I think they have a different chapter in every state. It’s not like it’s not like the US AMT. Like that covers everything. I think it’s different by state. But I think they also have different regulations by state.
Eric Purves 29:52
Yeah, we’re just we’re just throwing out things right now.
Jamie Johnston 29:56
This is my understanding. It doesn’t mean it’s right. Yeah.
Eric Purves 29:59
So by Just looking at their conference, though, again, just quickly looking through who who’s presenting and what it what are they presenting on? It looks like it is almost just bread, a brief introduction, it does look like it is predominantly massage therapy focused. Now, when we look at this, though we can, you know, without critiquing the evidence or the or the topics, because that’s, you know, for a different podcast, because that would go on forever. It is still it is still all looks like it is RMT. Focused. Good. Yeah. Which is good, which also goes to another Association, which I’m just gonna clear my screens here is I looked through this is in Manitoba, right. So they are starting to lease I’ve started taking notice with the work that they’re doing, they’re starting to do some some great work there in terms of getting trying to promote and build up evidence based educators and conferences and, and their conference they recently had in this ring, which was another one that I was I was fortunate enough to present that I didn’t, but I was out of town busy doing stuff. And just was able to present and I didn’t get a chance to observe any other presentations that were there. But afterwards, looking back and seeing who was presenting and the topics they were presenting on. There was all RMTS as well. Nice. So empty, focused,
Jamie Johnston 31:35
just quickly looking at it, too. It looks like they’re their keynote speaker was Michael Phelps. And that, to me, that’s really cool, because that’s somebody who, I don’t know how many gold medals I got ones, but I think it was like a dozen or something like that. Who obviously would have used massage therapy. And for somebody who works in high-level sport, like every athlete wants a massage after they’re done training, right. So I think that’s invaluable to have a guy like that come in and be like, what you guys are doing is great. You know what I you know, I used you regularly as a as a Olympic level athlete. So I think it’s really cool that they bring him in and convince him to come in and be a keynote speaker for them.
Eric Purves 32:18
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Well, what BC? What’s that? They’re talking about BCRMT. Their conference coming up too?
Jamie Johnston 32:34
Sure. I’ll say that I’m not as big a fan.
Eric Purves 32:39
Yeah, I’m a little bit disappointed with with the direction that this conference has gone.
Jamie Johnston 32:47
Yeah. It’s. Yeah, it’s not as massage therapist presenter-focused, as I would like to see. And I don’t know that it ever has been. Even though like, last year that, you know, there was Sandy Hilton and Walt Fritz and Cory Blick and staff and some great presenters that were there. And you know, and then the year they brought Lorimer Moseley out, like, granted, that’s, that’s a case where you’re learning from somebody who’s not a massage therapist, but when you’ve got one of the leading pain researchers in the world to come out, that’s a phenomenal way to spend a conference, I think,
Eric Purves 33:24
for sure, but really important information. Yeah.
Jamie Johnston 33:27
But looking, you know, when you’ve got when you have very capable people within your association, that could be presenting and you’re not using them? I think that’s, I think that’s a mistake.
Eric Purves 33:41
Yeah, and what I’m curious about, and I agree, and I think what I’m, what I am curious about, though, is that there’s so bomb teen BC RMTS. Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of ingrained into us is that like, you know, we’re kind of the lead, we’re told, like, we’re the leaders in the profession. And we are, our education is great. And, you know, we’re doing those wonderful things. And for years and years and years, I think the association has done a really good job at hosting good conferences with good presenters and you know, like, those examples are used, but they have not been predominantly be see RMT focused in terms of who’s presenting, whereas other profession, other associations. You know, maybe some of the content isn’t as good in terms of the topics. But you’re still promoting RMT is with in that association. And when we look at this one here, you got your first three people I see on the presenter list are lmts. So they’re American trained, and educated.
Jamie Johnston 34:48
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But you’re not within the profession. You’re not promoting from within.
Eric Purves 34:54
Yeah. And then you’ve got a professor UBC. Okay. And then you’ve got a physiotherapist. right from BC, Neil Pearson, okay, I’ve seen you speak, he’s got good information, but he’s not an RMT. And then you’ve got Aaron. And then you’ve got a panel speaker, which are all RMTS. So of all of the kind of presenters, you have one person that is a BC RMT. And then you’ve got a panel discussion, which is BCR. Empty. So it’s a very, very small segment of the day. And I find that just unfortunate when there is when you look at some of these other conferences, where you have BC RMTS presenting on their stuff, yeah, two different associations. But our own Association isn’t isn’t using the same people isn’t using the same people or when there’s tons here? And we know that and, yeah, it’s unfortunate. Yeah.
Jamie Johnston 35:47
Yeah. I mean, I could probably name 10 people off the top of my head, that would be great people to have present at a conference like this, like that, that aren’t used. And I know that those people are members in that association. So I, I’m not sure where, where the disconnect is, like, I don’t I don’t know who decides who’s presenting.
Eric Purves 36:11
Even when board members, we had no idea how that Yeah, that’s fine.
Jamie Johnston 36:16
But it’s disappointing because I just think there’s so much more that can be done to promote from within. Where, and if I think that’s one of the important things to talk about is if you did promote from within think about how much more you could do for the profession, and for your association. So let’s just give an example. I’m putting together a course with Megan Mounce on how to help people who have had mastectomy and have dealt with breast cancer and how to use movement and things like that. So you’ve got, you’ve got this individual who has a Bachelor’s degree, who’s an RMT, who’s a personal trainer, who has real life experience, going through something like that. And yet, you’re not utilizing that person to talk about that, and then being able to utilize a person like that. For other people who were there were that’s their interest, where you can almost hire them and be like, we want you to be like a mentor to other people who want to do the same thing. Yeah, right. If we promoted from within more, there’s just so much more we could do.
Eric Purves 37:32
Yeah, that’s it. I think it’s such a great point, it makes so much sense when we look at it that way that you could write like Sophie. So using Megan’s because we know Megan, and I’m sure of the content you guys are going to put out is is is fantastic. You know, and that’s a big thing now, too, is the the, like cancer recovery, oncology or breast cancer, right? You have a real world experience as somebody who’s had two bouts of cancer, or Anyway, she’s recovered from breast cancer. And has been through that process. And as well as she’s, you know, she has all these other personal life experiences. She’s really well educated on the topic. Like she would be somebody that’d be fantastic, too. Yeah. And so, no, or, you know, can we blame the arm TBC for not asking or they might not know, but they may all but they also don’t have like these other associations. They don’t have. They don’t request they don’t put requests out there. No. Right to like, they don’t they know, there’s nothing that we ever received. I’ve never signed anything like, Hey, you want to present? You know, we’re doing a thing on rehabilitation? And, you know, we’ve helped pay for your education. So, you know, why don’t? Why don’t you come present? Or, you know, or like, they’re like, Oh, hey, you know, we were looking for for people. You know, I’m sure if they have a team of people they find to look for, why don’t you if you’re doing a thing on rehabilitation? Why don’t you ask like, why don’t you put a thing out there and be like, Hey, we’re looking, we want to include something on breast cancer. And I see they do have a talk here on it. But maybe you have a couple different presenters on that topic. Right, rather than just one, and then all these other things that doesn’t really tie together? No, like, I don’t know, for somebody that if I was organizing a conference, it would, they would have more of a theme of rehabilitation is so vague. Yeah.
Jamie Johnston 39:23
Because it can be any 10 different directions. Like, like, I think tobacco point you said was a couple years ago, they did that oncology conference where they brought the folks up from here well to present which they did a great job presenting, but then if you can have somebody like Megan and somebody else with some experience there to present at that same conference, you know, and you’ve got a you’re talking about a certain population and you’re talking about, okay, how you how can you do rehab with that population or, you know, how can you support their support network, how can you do, you know, five other things with that population of people. So, So maybe it’s more important to this has gone off on another rant, but to make the conferences more about a population, and things within that population of how you can do things to help them.
Eric Purves 40:10
For sure. i That’s such a great point too, because the conference is should be focused on on something specific, I believe it should be based on, you know, the this conference is going to be on oncology, which they did, but then there was something there that wasn’t on Oncology at all. Yeah, you know, or there’s wine like they didn’t want on aging. And there was some stuff there that wasn’t aging, but some stuff that wasn’t and this one’s on rehabilitation. But what is rehabilitation? Like? It’s such a broad thing, like, they got stuff here on, they have a one on pain science and rehabilitation. Okay. It’s one thing, which is important. One on multidisciplinary, you know, you got the breast cancer one. But then you got like this other one on tendinopathy. So it’s, it’s it’s all over the place. I just find that it doesn’t it’s not cohesive at all.
Jamie Johnston 41:10
Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, we pump it up all the time, because we always talk about San Diego paints on it. And granted, every everything that’s presented down there might have a different angle to it. But it always comes back to talking about pain and helping people in pain. Yeah. Right. Whereas like, yeah, rehab, I mean, great, great topic for a conference, but it could be, you know, rehab with athletes. It could be rehab with MBA people, it can be in rehab in the workplace. It could be, there’s so many ways you could go with it. Yeah. Which would be maybe we should put a conference on?
Eric Purves 41:45
I think so I think we do. I think you’d do great job. It’d be Yeah, because it’d be cohesive, because there’s a whole bunch of stuff in here that has nothing to do with the topic of rehab. Yeah. You know, it’s weird. It’s a bit of a disconnect. And for anybody that’s has any experience in kind of marketing or sales, if there’s a disconnect between the message and the content, it people are become unsure of what is they’re getting? You know, I would imagine that some sort of, you know, I guess we’re being probably overly critical here. And, you know, we’re not trying to be critical of the association’s saying how we think this, these, this conference could be done better. Yeah. And how some other ones seem to be better with getting back into focus of r&d, led education. Is that okay, yeah, this conference sold out. But did it sell out because of the content? Or did it sell out? Because it’s because of credits? And that might be I think we already had a conversation with that about getting rid of the credits and how that impact? Yeah. Fashion. I’d be very curious to see if this type of President or this type of conference still sells out? I don’t know.
Jamie Johnston 42:59
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting, because the rmta will rmta Oh, one is a virtual conference. But they, they don’t have credits anymore. So I don’t know what the what the take up is on their conference, like how many people they’ve had registered. But, but obviously, they wouldn’t do it if conferences didn’t work. Yeah. Right. So hopefully, because of the way they’re doing it, hopefully there’s uptake because RMTS shouldn’t be learning from r&d.
Eric Purves 43:29
Yeah. There was a conference a couple years ago, on May, I think it was during the COVID. year, maybe just before just before. During COVID, there was a conference, an online conference that several people in Ontario did, and it was for charity. But they had hundreds of people, but it was all RMTS presenting. Perfect. And it was like it was cheaper. Like, oh, it’s like 50 bucks. I think all the money went to charity. And none of the presenter has got a penny. But it was great. A great conference and extending it was all warranty. focused and really well attended. And I thought it was a great idea. I think it’s a great idea. So it isn’t being done out there. It’s just doesn’t seem to be focused here where we live.
Jamie Johnston 44:14
Yeah. Well, maybe we’ll have to change that. And but
Eric Purves 44:18
yeah, you know, yeah. Could be could be. Anyway. So RMTS leading r&d is what we’re looking for, is we’re advocating for, you know, sounds like we whine and complain a lot, but I think it’s just because we want better.
Jamie Johnston 44:29
Yeah, it’s, I mean, literally, every the whole reason that we even have this podcast is just to build the profession up. It’s not about trying to complain about other people and what they’re doing, even though it probably sounds like that sometimes, but But really, we would just want the profession to move forward and we want the people in the progression to move forward. You know, we need more people to be presenters. We need more people to share their knowledge and share those things that they’re interested in so that we all get better Look, I know you and I have had conversations before, and I’m like, I will forever be the team guy. And I think the bigger team that we can make of presenters within this profession that are presenting evidence based information. Yeah. And you make that team bigger and bigger and bigger all the time, it’s only going to help
Eric Purves 45:18
you because everybody’s gonna build up everybody else. Right? Yeah. It just makes sense. Yeah. And, you know, it’s, and for someone like myself, who’s I presented it? I don’t know. 10 different conferences, maybe over the over the years. And with all the courses and lectures and stuff, what you do see when you have RMTS, presenting and leading as you do, and I’ve had people, many people reach out to me, like, Oh, I saw your presentation, or I saw your webinar, or I was I was, you know, I was sitting in the front row and asked all the questions, I’ve been really empowered to, to start to wanting to teach her to lecture or to research or whatever it is that they’re interested in. And I’ve since seen many of those people over the years that have that have that have said, hey, look, thank you. Yeah, they are now presenting. Yeah, great. And so if you’re going to help one person, and then that person gets up there, and then they inspire somebody else. And my inspiration for starting to wanting to teach and wanting to present. And all the things that I do now was from that first and you go paint Summit, where I saw all these people talking about stuff they were passionate about knowledgeable about America thinking, I want to do that one day. I don’t know if necessary want to present San Diego because I think that would stress me out too much. Because I like to go there for a good time not for just to enjoy a holiday and enjoy holiday doing some stuff here for a conference. But anyway, I was really inspired by that. And I and I would not be doing what I’m doing now if I didn’t attend that conference. So it’s really, really important. The association’s to realize the power that has great power become comes great responsibility.
Jamie Johnston 46:58
100%. Yeah. And with the amount of members that most of the associations have. They need to look at that responsibility very seriously and take it seriously and build up the people in the profession. I think that’s a great way to end this podcast
Eric Purves 47:16
yesterday and my friend.
Jamie Johnston 47:19
All right, everybody. We’ll see you next time. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. These kinds of topics are what we’re all about. If you’d like to learn more, go to our websites,
Eric Purves 47:31
themtdc.com or ericpurvescom. If you know of any other therapists that could benefit from this, please tell them to subscribe
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
The post Podcast Episode #28 With Great Educational Power, Comes Great Educational Responsibility appeared first on The Massage Therapist Development Centre.
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