Reflecting on Growth and Moving Forward in 2024

It's been a great journey since the podcast's inception, and your support has catapulted us across 15 countries with a burgeoning community of listeners. This special New Year episode is a toast to you, as we reflect on the strides we've made and the ground we're set to break. Your voices are the backbone of this platform, so consider this your invitation to shape our future episodes with your insights and curiosity.

This episode isn't just a retrospective glance; it's a discussion of the path forward. I'm rolling out two brand new hands-on courses that address common and complex concerns for lower back, pelvic, neck, and shoulder pain. I want to move these courses from theory into a evidence-based approaches. I will also be presenting a number of webinars and my foray into industry conferences, where I'll be demystifying the complexities of chronic pain management for therapists. 

Transcript

Eric: 0:08

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purves Versus. My name is Eric Purves. I'm a registered massage therapist, course creator, continuing education provider and curriculum advisor for massage therapy education. I am passionate about advancing massage therapy towards current science and adopting evidence-based best practices. Thank you for listening and being here today. If you enjoy my podcast, please share it on social media and subscribe to be notified of all new episodes. This podcast is also available to be viewed and listened to on YouTube, so please check us out there. Hey everybody, thanks for being here today. This is going to be just me today, just chatting with you. Happy New Year.

Eric: 0:46

This is my end of the year happy new year episode and I just wanted to take some time just to kind of go through and talk about some of the events of 2023 that are worth mentioning, as well as telling you, my loyal listeners, what is up with me for 2024. It's crazy to meet it, to feel it, to see that there's the end of another year. I know, when I was younger and probably most of you feel the same way that your parents and your grandparents would say things like oh, you know, when you get my age, you know I'm just flies and maybe I'm at that age now? I don't like to think I am, but I do feel that time goes by pretty darn quick. It's crazy to think that four years ago, we were just on the verge of COVID hitting our lives and changing the world and really impacting all of us in some way, shape or form, and so that was four years ago now, and I just find that really crazy to think. So I wanted to say just first off, for those of you that are here and listening to, thank you very much for being supportive of my podcast this. I launched my first episode in April of 2023, and I started recording my episodes at the end of 2022, and I wanted to make sure I had a good library of them first before I launched the podcast, and I still have quite a few new ones to put out for next year, for 2024, and I'm really excited about the guests and the topics that we are going to explore. What I would like to say, though, is that if there are any topics that you guys are interested in, or any guests or things that you would like to hear more about, please let me know, because I enjoy doing these podcasts, but I'm happy to explore some things that you, my listeners, are looking to hear more about. So if you have any comments or any suggestions, please feel free to contact me. Easiest way, probably, is to send me an email which is hello at ericperviscom. Or you can send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram which is just ericpervisrmt and let me know what you think.

Eric: 3:17

The thing that's kind of funny with doing these podcasts is that you never really know who is listening. And I get my stats of how many downloads I've had and how many minutes and what countries are from, but unless somebody actually tells me they're listening, I actually have no idea. So one thing I would love for you if you are listening to this episode right now, pause it and connect with me. Let me know whether you post it on social media and you can tag me, or you can just take a minute to send me an email and say hey, I'm listening to your podcast. I would love to hear that, because I have no idea who actually is listening to these things. There's quite a few of you that are, and that's fantastic, but yeah, I would like to put some names to the download numbers. And just speaking of download numbers, actually this is a thing that's kind of fun. I'm all about numbers and data and stats and those kind of things.

Eric: 4:07

But when I got a notification here for end of the year through my podcast, the Buzzsprout, who I do my podcast through and I have no idea if this is good or not, but it said my podcast is in the top 50% of all podcasts, so I don't know, I mean there's millions of podcasts out there, probably, so I was probably not saying much. But hey, you know it's better than being in the. You know, maybe I'm 50.1%, I don't know. I was surprised to see that. And I was really excited to see too that this year that my podcast was listened to in 15 different countries, which to me it just blew my mind. I would have thought you know, where do I have? Where do people, where do I know people from you know that follow me, canada, the US, the UK, new Zealand, australia. That's five, so there's 10 other countries out there that people are listening from. So, yeah, let me know if you are listening to this, let me know where you're from, not just you know, don't just connect with me and say hi, my name is, you know, john Smith, and I listen to say yeah, I'm John Smith and I'm from wherever. I'd like to know where you're from, what countries are listening to this, and what also it's exciting about the podcast is that there has been increased the number of downloads and listenership, since every episode seems to get faster in terms of how many people reach a certain threshold of downloads, so that's exciting to see, so I'm really appreciative of that.

Eric: 5:46

It has been interesting, though, doing this podcast compared to how when I did the other one with my friend Jamie, the massage therapist development initiative is that you know when you're doing this on your own, they're actually quite a bit more work than I would have expected. I've been on so many others people's podcasts over over my years and even having doing that one with Jamie, I didn't realize how much time and it took to do these, so it's been a learning curve for me in terms of the scripting and the connecting with guests, and then the editing and the putting in the sounds, and then, you know, putting in the little clips to put on social media, which is usually put on Instagram and Facebook. It's been quite time consuming. So one of the things that I was able to do this year that's made that process a little bit easier for me is I was able to hire my first assistant. So some of you may have had connections with Kate. She's my virtual assistant and she takes care of a lot of the kind of back end stuff of the things that I do, which includes a lot of the stuff for the podcast. So that's exciting. That's something I never thought that I would need or want.

Eric: 7:02

But you know, one thing I have learned over the last number of years is that you know time is a finite resource and you know when you can pay somebody else to help you, to take time, to give you more time, it's worth every penny. So I'm really appreciative of Kate and the work that she's been able to do for me and so if ever you anybody contacts me through email, and if you contact me at the support at ericperviscom email, that actually goes to Kate. So she also does a lot of my social media stuff. So if you ever do get a chance to connect with her, you know just to say hi and you know appreciate, say thank you, because she's definitely making my life a lot easier. I don't realize how many hours I was spending doing things until I had her support.

Eric: 7:59

But in addition to the success of Purpose Versus is, you know this, last year I started actually doing my first paid work as in Crickham Development and this has been something that's been really, really exciting and it's something I'm really passionate about. And if anyone that has taken courses for me, or you guys that listen to this podcast or other podcasts I'm on, I'm really passionate about, you know, changing in a positive way the professional massage therapy by advancing us and moving towards science and best practices and really just like using the evidence to inform what it is that we do so that we can provide higher value care to the people that come to seek our support and our treatments. And so I've done a lot of work with schools and a lot of, you know, talks with different schools across the country and you know the barrier that they always that I hear consistently from everyone and I've probably worked with about. I'd have to stop and count, but I've probably done at least 10 different schools I've done.

Eric: 9:09

I've contacted or I've been in contact with the deans of education and I've had the opportunity just to speak to classes and you know about different things depending on what the topic that they want to explore and the feedback I always get I shouldn't say often the feedback I always get from the students is you know, why don't we learn this stuff in school? If this is what the science is saying, why don't we learn this in school? And it's a delicate discussion too to have, because you don't want to throw the schools or the instructors under the bus, but the barrier always is oh, we're just, you know, we have to give the students based on the competency documents. We have to teach them based on the approved textbooks from the regulatory colleges, and I understand that and I'm appreciative of that, and it kind of sucks because it's a big barrier when a school has to teach outdated content. But I've been a huge believer and a huge advocate for a long time that you can still teach based on those competency documents and get students to pass tests, but giving them the current science and best practices, and I know that there's a way to do that. Often there's barriers People other schools didn't want to invest in it or didn't feel that it was their job because it's a business and they were just pumping out students, and that's fine and I can understand that.

Eric: 10:41

But what I was really excited about, though, this year in 2023, was the lovely people at Vickers School of Massage Therapy in Alberta reached out to me and hired me as a curriculum advisor, and it has been some of the most rewarding work that I've ever done. The team there of educators and the owner wanted to basically redo a curriculum that was based on current best science, best practices. They wanted to get rid of the or revamp the way things were being done, which was very structural, postural, biomechanical, focus and incorporate. How do we keep the traditions of massage therapy, how do we keep the information there that students need are going to need to answer on a board exam, but how can we also inform the students with the current science? And they have done a fantastic job at revamping their curriculum. From what I have seen and the work that I've done with them has been really really, really exciting and the faculty they have there seems to be on board with it, and I am convinced and excited that they're going to have a lot of success in the students that, coming out of that school in the next few years, are probably going to be at a very high level of knowledge, which is exciting to see, and so, fingers crossed, I look forward to seeing what the completed curriculum is, but they won't start launching until near the end of 2024, I believe.

Eric: 12:19

But anyone here is listening to this episode or listening to this, or someone you know an educator, or you know faculty at school, or you know people that own a school, or you work at a school anything you can change the curriculum, you can change how things are being taught without having to completely gut the current program. Ideally, that would be fantastic, but for you know what I think is a worthwhile investment you can make big changes in your content and start putting therapists out there in the world that don't have their heads filled with useless or unhelpful information, and informing them so that they understand what the current science says about how do we treat people with pain, the current science about how manual therapy works. You know, loaded up with lots of the soft skills that are necessary for communication and listening and for how to use movement and exercise. And you know, exploration of touch into a program is possible, and so if you are listening and you want to hear my thoughts on that, or if you want to have a conversation with that, please again connect with me, send me a message and I'd be happy to talk to you about that. So Vickers School Massage Therapy in Alberta good for you guys. I'm really excited to be working with you and that's been a big thing with me in 2023 that I'm really proud of, and I look forward to continuing my work with them throughout 2024.

Eric: 14:03

Also, too, another thing to look forward to in 2024, which is as I have created a couple new courses, and I created them in 2023 and I taught them a couple times as kind of more of these. You know, see how they go and try and learn and develop them even more, to develop them even more, to make them better. But I did create two new courses. They're called Research to Practice for lower back and pelvic pain. Another one is called Research to Practice for the neck and shoulder, and what I did is all my other courses that I've done over the last number of years have had a lot of theory in them and a lot of information, heavy stuff, a lot of myth busting, and you know they're more information based and discussion based rather than super heavy, practical.

Eric: 14:55

So what I wanted to do with these kind of next bunch of courses is I wanted to take a further step, more into what do we do with this information. Right, if you are familiar or comfortable with kind of the pain science stuff and kind of most of the evidence based practice kind of things, then these courses I think are for you in terms of, like, how do we take that information and how do we apply that in these regional areas? Right, how do we assess? You know, how do we, and what assessments do we use? Which ones do we throw away? Because we know there's lots of stuff out there that you know it talks about. You know how most assessments aren't valid or reliable. They don't have a. Their sensitivity and specificity isn't really that great.

Eric: 15:39

So these new courses we're focusing on how to assess, basically called assessment, made simple. And then how do we? You know, what do we do with our hands, with this information? Like, how do we, if we're going to be evidence based and we understand the what, what I don't want to say limitations but if we understand how, what we do when we have our hands on people, how do we, how do we incorporate these things into treatment? Because a lot of stuff I say is right, just touch people nicely, make people feel good, but what does that actually look like in practice? And so these courses, what I've done is I've really tried to Make them as practical as possible so you get your hands on people, you get to practice different techniques. I'm going to show you, you know, my 16 years of of experience clinically to try to do different things with people and give you Some perspectives on how to touch people nicely and and maybe a way that's different from how you you would have learned in other classes.

Eric: 16:41

And so the, the similarities and low back and pelvic pain, in terms of how that course is taught, it follows a very similar format. Right, we go through a little bit of the you know the, the, the re are what do we call a rehash or a Reminder of kind of some of the pain science stuff, and we go from there into kind of the, the, the current, like Regional specific things you know, like. How do we determine if it's like sadica or, like you know, a pseudo sadica type thing or like, is it a ridiculous pain or is it, like you know, just mechanical low back pain or is it, like you know, is there things coming from the neck or the shoulder, like is it frozen shoulder? Is it, you know, do you have pain in the rotator cuff from? Maybe it's a tendinopathy or maybe it's, you know, you know a tear or sprain, strain, these kind of things. So we go through all the different kind of regional presentations how to assess them, how to treat them and then we focus a lot on like, how do we incorporate movement? Well, the Person is on and off the table in what I say is a less prescriptive way. So it's Giving you the clinician Freedom to not have to follow a lot of specific rules. Now I'll give you some protocols in these courses and and kind of. So you have something to follow, like a, but it's not something that it has to be Prescribed a specific way.

Eric: 18:06

So this is what I've done and with my new courses, I thought you know, I'm still teaching, potentially, my chronic pain courses and these other ones that I've been doing for a while, but the, the new ones I thought would be would be fun. So I spent a good chunk of 2023 just basically getting out there and Reflecting on what I've done and what I want to do, and this is what I've come up with. And I did them twice this year. I did one low back and pelvic pain and one neck and shoulder one. The feedback I heard was was pretty good, and so I've going. I've even developed them even more to make them a little bit More practical, so that's exciting. So if you are listening and you want to take one of these courses, you can.

Eric: 18:50

All of my courses are on my website, which is airpurposecom slash courses. But April 20th and 21st I'm going to be in Calgary, so this is my lower back and pelvic pain course, and then June 8th and 9th I'm gonna be in Kelowna for the neck and shoulder that. One's already got a bunch of sales, so I'm excited that my BC colleagues are looking forward to taking that one. I'm hoping that one will probably sell out sooner than later. So that's exciting. And I also got a couple new locations this year where I'm gonna be presenting and teaching. I'm gonna be actually in Albany, new York, on July 27th 28th and this is gonna be for a neck and shoulder course. So if anybody here is listening and you live in the state of New York, this is approved by the NCB TMB and it is approved for 16 credits and it is got approved for the New York sponsorship as well, and so I'm gonna be teaching that one. So that should be fun and I'm gonna also be in May. I'm gonna be teaching at MTAM so the Massage Therapist Association in Manitoba at their annual conference I'm gonna be doing.

Eric: 19:58

Last year I did a two-day low back and pelvic pain course. That was my first time I taught this version of that course. But this year I'm gonna. I'm breaking it up and I'm doing a couple Shorter little presentations. I'm doing One on fibromyalgia which is just a half day. I'm doing a full day on the neck and shoulder which is going to be just basically the two-day course on fast forward. Just kind of give you the, the main components of that. And I'm doing another presentation In there for another just a little lecture presentation on osteoarthritis. So that should be fun. And also another thing that's exciting for this year for me is I'm gonna be presenting my first conference in the United States. I, my fibromyalgia Management presentation for massage therapists was accepted by the AMTA to as one of their Presentations for next year in Tampa, florida. So I'm gonna be there on September 12th. So that should be fun. I've never been to Florida. It's a long ways to go for just a three hour presentation, but I'm looking forward to that. So that should be exciting and kind of.

Eric: 21:12

Last but not least, for one thing I've decided to do for 2024, which is going to be Something. I started this last year and I did a couple webinars. I've decided to do six of them this year. So last year I did a fibromyalgia webinar, I did a neck and shoulder webinar and these ones were kind of just testers to see. Do people want to take like a 90 minute or two hour webinar? Is it valuable for them? It's hard to teach practical stuff in a webinar format, but what I did do with the neck and shoulder one is I did include about 20 minutes of recorded videos for a couple of assessment and movement things, a couple of hands on things and a couple rehab type stuff, and so they were well attended and I really appreciated everybody being there and I really appreciated the feedback on how to make them better. So I'm gonna do six different webinars for 2022, and these are gonna be spread out throughout the year and I've got a couple new ones in here as well. Some of the new ones that I'm gonna be doing I'm gonna be doing one on assessment and measurement. So this is something that keeps coming up.

Eric: 22:34

I find in the world of massage therapy is people aren't really sure about how to do specific assessment and measurements and how to document that and how to submit that stuff to insurance companies or how to submit that stuff to you can get treatments approved. We are starting to see more and more insurance companies that are being a little bit funny and finicky about approving treatments or asking for RMTs to document why treatments have been going on for long periods of time. So I figured that this is from some conversations I've had with people over the last probably over the last year, but definitely over the last few months that this is something that people are concerned about. So part of my master's degree, I did an entire section on basically evidence-based assessment and measurement and what do we use, like what actually gives us an objective measure that we can document and so we can show to not just our clients or patients but also to the insurance companies and say, hey look, this is what the person came in with, this is what our findings were and this is our treatment plan and this is how they've improved, or not. So basically this my assessment and measurement webinar, which I'm doing on April 8th, and this one's gonna be more BC specific, but I'm gonna be doing it twice this year. I'm gonna be doing one in April and another one is going to be in November, november 13th. The November 13th one isn't on my website yet, but the April 8th one is. You can find it on the airportvistcom slash courses. This is gonna be basically take you through like what should we do and what shouldn't we do?

Eric: 24:18

So a lot of the ways that we learned massage therapy and assessment was we learned things like a verbal, like a numerical pain scale. We learned range of motion. We learned that we're supposed to be able to have like objective palpation things, and what we realize when we look at the science is that that stuff doesn't really tell us a lot. What really we need is we need more patient reported, patient reported outcome measures which are standardized and which are consistently shown to give reliable scores for people over time. And there's different measurement instruments that you can use for different areas of the body you know, like for the neck, there's a couple we can use for the neck. For the low back, there's a couple we can use for the low back. There's these general functional scores that we can provide as well. There's ones for the arm, there's ones for the lower extremity and there's ones that are specific just to pain and pain generally or pain in specific regions of the body.

Eric: 25:23

So, with this, the reason I want to do this webinar is I want to give RMTs the tools and the confidence to say, hey, patient comes in after motor vehicle accident, or patient comes in after a workplace accident, and this patient has been coming in for a time and time and time again with the same kind of low back pain. How can I assess them? How can I record an accurate measurement? And then how could I use that to justify a treatment plan or to support a treatment plan or to decide that, hey, maybe now's the time to refer out. This is something that I don't think we are educated well on in our profession. So this webinar, I'm hoping, is an opportunity to share some of that stuff with you, and so I've tried to make them as low cost as possible and make them as accessible as possible, so you can find those on my website.

Eric: 26:15

I've also, too, decided to do some more practical webinars as well in terms of treatment stuff. I found last year that doing these webinars kind of throughout the year was such a great way to connect with people from all over the world and getting people to register and take these webinars and learn with me and learn with other RMTs A really useful way, which is simplicity is key. We don't want to have to travel. We want to be able to learn from the comfort of our home often. So these webinars are a way of doing that.

Eric: 26:55

So I'll be doing one on low back and pelvis. I'm going to be doing one on fibromyalgia again. I'm going to do one specifically on chronic pain, which is kind of my meat and potatoes one. I like that one. I've been doing that one the longest, so that'll just be a short webinar on that. These will all be about 90 minutes to two hours maximum. I'll be doing one on osteoarthritis, which is a new-ish one as well. I'm going to be doing another one called the science of massage. I'll be a fun one too. That's going to look at all of the what is massage therapy to what happens within that clinical encounter, what happens when we put our hands on people, what happens when we interact with people. What's the science currently say is the less wrong explanation for that? That'll be something I'm excited about doing as well this year.

Eric: 27:44

So there are lots of things going on in 2024, which are all exciting A bunch of live courses, a bunch of webinars. I still have some of the curriculum and development going on and as well as I have this podcast to end to keep this going. So I'm going to keep this episode short, just to keep it for less than 30 minutes. So I could just kind of give you guys a thank you, talk about the successes of my podcast this year and just to give you, my listeners, a heads up of what is happening with me for next year. So if any of these things interest you, you can find those on my website and participate and register for these courses, whether they're webinars or in person. So thank you for being here today.

Eric: 28:30

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to on your favorite podcast network so you can be notified of all future episodes. And also, if you want to watch or listen on YouTube, subscribe like it there. And please, please, please. I would really, really appreciate your support to share the podcast or share specific episodes on your social media platforms and please tag me. I'd really appreciate to see who's listening and what you have to say and what you liked about the episodes. And, like I said at the beginning of this episode, if you can connect with me, say hey, yes, eric, I listen, this is where I live. Thank you very much for putting these out, or this is what I'd like to see more of. Your feedback is really, really appreciated, so thank you again for all your support in 2023. Happy New Year to each of you, and I look forward to connecting with as many of you as possible, whether it's live or online, in 2024. Thank you.