President's letter

Greetings to you all and I hope all of your holiday plans came to fruition. This year will hopefully prove to be a changing point for our Section. Hard work and good communication on all of our parts will allow us move forward into this new year with commitment towards achieving our goals.

There are 5 main topics that I will be addressing here:

1. The Section's Name Change

June Marble, Annie Downs, and I made sure that our desire to change our Section's name was sent to all of the parties required for this action to occur. I placed in the Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal (Volume 10, Number 3) a letter from the President outlining the reason for changing our Section's name. June then sent a letter to each of the Section Presidents for their signature of approval. As of last week, all but 4 have responded with a letter of affirmation. June is being tenacious in making sure that all of the President's approval will be in hand by CSM. Annie made sure that this year's ballot to all of the Section members included the change in Section name Approval Form. When the votes are tallied and membership is in agreement, then approval is assured since the APTA's parliamentarian has already given us their "thumbs up."

2. Our Motion from Last Year to the APTA's House of Delegates

Last year our Section submitted to the APTA's House of Delegates a motion regarding the matter of other groups performing therapeutic exercise on patients with impairments. With the help of Jonathan Cooperman, JD, MS, PT, we have worded the this year's tentative motion as follows:

In an effort to safeguard the public by ensuring that persons with impairments receive the highest quality of care delivered by qualified practitioners, the American Physical Therapy Association Board of Directors will monitor, investigate, and take appropriate action in response to any proposed credentialing, accreditation, licensure or other regulatory efforts of individuals or groups seeking to be recognized to perform therapeutic exercise on persons with impairments.

I will be conferring with the CPS Board of Directors as to whether to move forward with this issue.

3. Task Force Report

a. Linda Crane Memorial Lectureship

Linda Crane Memorial Lectureship Committee was chaired by Ellen Hillegass with Nancy Ciesla and Donna Frownfelter as members. I have received a draft of the proposed mechanism for choosing the recipient of the yearly award. I have asked Ellen to be the Chair of the Committee for the first round of choosing the recipient.

4. Guide to Physical Therapist Practice

a. Reviewers for Parts 3 & 4

As the Guide to PT Practice, Parts 3 & 4 come to their initial draft status, we will need to have many reviewers. We need to act proactively in this regard (not reactively) so that the eventual published documents represents our best efforts. We need to strategize about the best mechanism to allow this to occur.

b. Practice Patterns

Something that has struck others and me is the lack of a "Wellness or Health Promotion" Pattern in the Guide (I know that there are some primary risk factor reduction patterns e.g., cardiovascular risk, osteoporosis but an overall wellness pattern seems to be missing). Since one of the PT Guide's major concepts is "the role of prevention and wellness strategies in optimizing function," physical therapists as health care providers should help in designing routine physical activity that helps to reduce the risk of future pathologies, impairments, morbidity, and mortality. More and more studies are supporting this notion that 30 minutes of moderate (3 - 6 METS) physical activity performed daily is adequate to reduce some of the major pathologies leading to impairments in our society. We as a profession are prime to help with this effort.

5. Lastly - Thanks for all of your Hard Work

After many years of service to the Section, the following 2 persons are stepping down from chairing their respective committees. They include:

Susan Scherer, who as Vice President of the Section designed and implemented the APTA's FAX on demand entitled "Starting a Cardiovascular or Pulmonary Rehab Program." This handy sheet of information containing information and guidelines on proper mechanisms for beginning a rehab program has saved others and me countless time either on the phone or by email to persons desiring this information. Susan is busy working on her doctorate and needs to be solely focused on that goal. Once finished, I am sure that Susan will become active with the Section again. Thank you, Susan, for your support.

Jane Wetzel, who as Program Chair has done an outstanding job in organizing our presentations at CSM for the last umpteen years. Jane has worked incredibly hard in making sure that the presentations are relevant, current, and well produced by the presenters. She is always working behind the scene to make sure that everything that is needed for the presenters are on hand. Jane is leaving the post due to her desire to finish her doctoral dissertation. She deserves not only our thanks but also encouragement for her achieving her new goal. Dan Malone has agreed to take the Program Chair's position and we welcome him to the Executive Board.

Annie Downs is coming off Nominating Chair position. Annie with the help of others gathered an outstanding group of persons for us to vote for this year. She made sure the ballot went out, along with the Section Name Change Approval Form, and a survey form that the membership was asked to fill out. Even though she is stepping down from the position, she has consented to put the information from the survey into a database. This database will help us to find persons more easily with expertise in an areas) and where our membership is currently practicing ie, acute hospitals, cardiac rehabilitation centers, trauma centers...It is always a pleasure to work with Annie. Her positive spirit always shines forth.

I would also like to personally thank Sandy Cassady for her work with the Section's Journal. Sandy has again put our Journal in a new and brighter light with the Special Issue Edition on Physiological Monitoring Parts 1 (which you have received) & 2 (your reading it now). Sandy has not only raised the bar of the publication, she has ensured that the amount of advertising has skyrocketed. The Journal is now positioned with many papers in line for future publication, which is due in part to the amount of research that we are doing and the quality of the Journal under Sandy's stewardship.

I want to thank each of you for helping to make this Section work as well as it does. All of you-put in a great amount of time, hard work, and it is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Steven H. Tepper, PhD, PT

President of the Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Section