SAAO Clinic Model for On-Campus OMT
By: Luke Kane, TUCOM-CA
Lunchtime OMT clinic at Touro University California, College of Osteopathic Medicine (TUCCOM) is a bi-weekly on campus opportunity for students to facilitate learning of manual and diagnostic skills in a supervised setting. We have seen around 300 patients per year for the past ten years. When we realized other schools did not provide this opportunity, we decided to operationalize our clinic into a structured model. We thought a robust clinic structure could soften the barrier to starting a clinic and provide more students an opportunity to find the ease in manual medicine practice. We drafted clinic guidelines for administrative and logistical flow, as well created the Clinic Coordinator SAAO board position. The documents we created include: daily operation logistics, administrative logistics, example and blank SOAP notes, and patient education handouts. This simple set up is effective and available as a package to implement at any osteopathic medical school. In the future we would like to create more patient education handouts created for home care and ergonomics, and create generalized OMT peak performance treatment templates.
Our clinic is designed to be an effective experience for exposure and practice of osteopathic manipulative medicine. Learning the application of manipulative medicine takes considerable practice. Our clinic works because we have effective commitment from student-practitioners, preceptors, and a willing patient population achieved through the on campus location and the preset lunch hour time restriction. The proximity and brief time allotted quell commitment fears from students who want to practice and from those who need care, but are otherwise too busy to seek it. Students suffer from innumerable lists of somatic dysfunction, especially at the cervical and lumbar regions. Access to even basic level OMT can provide a great deal of relief for an overworked student population. We hope that our clinic model will gain high velocity and at the very least have a low amplitude impact.
We would like to thank and acknowledge all of our boards members, student practitioners, faculty, and staff for their efforts in making this project a success. All documents necessary to replicate our clinic are available by contacting [email protected].
"I love building my OMT skills on campus over lunch. SAAO clinic allows me to practice seeing patients and implement effective treatments as we learn them." -Sara Wagner OMS2
"Getting a treatment at SAAO clinic really helped me focus for finals after they alleviated my neck spasm" - Charlie Piermarini, 2nd year PA student