When it’s recommended that you will benefit from physical or occupational therapy, patients make an important decision on where to receive treatment.
When choosing one of three AIM (Advanced Integrative Movement) clinics in Tacoma, Dupont or Puyallup, patients have the benefit of some of the most highly trained therapists in the region, thanks to a cutting edge training program required of all of therapists.
The educational requirement to become a licensed physical therapist is a Masters or Doctorate Degree in Physical Therapy. However, at AIM, they set their sights a little higher by including an extensive residency program.
Kurt Moss, physical therapist (PT) and one of the proud owners of three AIM centers in the South Sound, said AIM takes great pride in the training provided to their therapists. The more skills a therapist has, the more value they bring to the patient.
“What makes us different is our training for therapists,” said Moss. “The reason I started the program was to have consistency among all three of our clinics in terms of treatment, exercise and functional movement patterns. You have to be able to teach people how to move in proper patterns and this training assists us in furthering our goals for our patients.”
AIM treats patients with orthopedic, geriatric, pediatric and sports injuries and for neurological and women’s health issues. They also provide home health visits. AIM also serves many of our respected military members due to their locations around Joint Base Lewis-McChord. AIM’s residency program has established a baseline of treatment patterns and modalities to its clinicians in each of its three state-of-the-art physical therapy centers.
“Our program has set us apart as a world-class physical therapy practice in this community,” said Moss.
Physical therapist Laura Rosado, who works at AIM’s Dupont clinic, said the residency training program is why she took the job at AIM.
“I did my homework on them and took seven interviews. They (AIM) made a really big impression on me,” said Rosado. “We are all focused on the same outcome.”
The training required of all AIM’s therapists is done through a company called Therapeutic Movement Seminars (based in Bellevue) where owner and innovator Gordon Browne, teaches the program. Browne, a physical therapist since 1983, operates a physical therapy clinic in Bellevue, Washington, with his wife, Julie.
Moss said, “We have benefited greatly as a company and individually as practitioners to have this type of expertise and training. Gordon Browne brings a breath of fresh air to rehabilitation and to how we treat our clients.”
“His knowledge of movement is cutting edge, and how he implements that into a medical model for practitioners to readily use is practical and easy,” added Moss.
Browne created the program after learning that physical therapy schools and continuing education courses were not adequately applying the techniques of functional movement and neuromuscular facilitation to orthopedic professionals. There was a need. Among a wide variety of skills, his approach consists of a variety of non-traditional exercise approaches, including the Feldenkrais Method®, Yoga, Pilates and Tai Chi.
“I recognized that these Integrated Movement Systems have elements that could not only be of great use to the orthopedic clinician but seemed to be the logical next step for our profession,” commented Browne.
“I have explored various manual therapy, therapeutic exercise and soft tissue release methods during my 25-plus year career. As interesting and beneficial as they have been, I felt that my array of exercises and manual techniques lacked overall cohesion, purpose or unifying themes; they were a list of possible ingredients without a recipe,” Browne said.
Browne said his goal in teaching both the weekend seminars and the two year certification program courses are to help therapists and physicians have a better understanding of human movement, defining what constitutes optimal movement and why poor movement and postural patterns leads to or contributes to musculoskeletal dysfunction.
“AIM Physical Therapy is the only clinic, as a whole, that has completed the Orthopedic Movement Specialist (OMS) program. We have another OMS program that is now half-way through their training, but it consists of individual medical professionals from a variety of clinical settings and geographical locations,” Browne concluded. “AIM Physical Therapy is the only clinic group so far, and much to their credit, that has made a collective move toward utilizing the cutting edge integrated movement principles that we teach.”
For more information on AIM, click here.
