Regulation and training
Regulation
All osteopaths are regulated by the General Osteopathic Council. All practitioners must have undergone a recognised training course, have to maintain insurance and need to keep up to date with training.
Training
It is a statutory requirement for all osteopaths to complete 30 hours of training each year. Below are some of the recent courses attended by Duncan Larter.
13 th March 2010
NCSO meeting. The main part of the course was presented by an osteopath who uses ultrasound as a diagnostic modality to investigate tendon problems and to screen for blood vessel problems. This was interesting as some practical work followed and it was relatively simple to image the tendons of the biceps and rotator cuff. A demonstration of the aortic scan was performed. Various machines were on display and there was discussion of the clinical relevance and reasoning involved.
8th May 2010
Northern Counties Society of Osteopaths meeting, looking at relationships between weak muscles and specific joint problems. I found this helpful as I sometimes use a similiar system of diagnosis to find out what is making a muscle function poorly.
12th & 13th June 2010
Northern Counties Society of Osteopaths Convention
A speaker presented a different view of spinal load and an enhanced role of the muscles in supporting load, with website links to new research and exercises. The orthodox and osteopathic approaches to the thorax and abdomen helped to enhance case history taking and clinical decision making plus provided a practical technique approach. The knee talk gave me a much better understanding of meniscal tears. The hip arthroscopy talk gave me new information which I hope to use with complex hip diagnosis problems. The wrist talk was very clearly set out with a useful method of classifying wrist conditions.
20th November 2010
Northern Counties meeting
We discussed the new General Osteopathic Council documents which help to guide and regulate the profession.
15th January 2011
Northern Counties meeting
We had an interesting talk on ergonomics, the science of assessing people in workplace situations and how to help advise on work posture and activity.
12th and 13th March 2011
Northern Counties Convention
We spent two days listening to lectures about breathing muscles, upper chest breathing disorders, taking part in practical treatment and exercise sessions, also hearing BOA and GOsC representatives speal about current regulatory issues.
20th May 2011
Visit to Nuffield Middlesborough
My colleague Robert Hopkins and I visited Mr Krishna and his team to watch various spinal surgical procedures. I was very impressed by the efficiency and skill of Mr Krishna and his team. It was educational to see at first hand the use of modern surgical techniques and new implant devices. There was a great deal of attention to using modern discogram methods which improve the diagnostic accuracy.
25th September 2011
General Osteopathic Council Revalidation Pilot Course
This was a day organised by our registering body to help those of us engaged in the revalidation pilot to understand and use the course material. We will be part of a year long project to find out how the profession can implement the requirements of revalidation which is a government initiative.
14th January 2012
Northern Counties Society of Osteopaths meeting
Colleagues met to discuss new training regulation consultations and to have the annual AGM.
10th and 11th March 2012
Northern Counties Society of Osteopaths convention
This was a two day event covering neurological assessment, clinic technology, pain mechanisms, visceral osteopathy and muscle anatomy trains.
28th March 2012
Lamberts Seminar
Lamberts provided a two part course on asthma and chronic pain with a view to looking at nutritional factors.
