‘Case-based discussions were a big part of training’

Alex Black graduated from the British School of Osteopathy with a Masters in Osteopathy.  She currently has a practice in Edinburgh where she treats a wide range of musculoskeletal complaints, and runs an onsite clinic within the Occupational Health Department of an Oil Refinery in Grangemouth. Alex was one of around 200 osteopaths, known as ‘early adopters’ who volunteered to take part in webinars to try out the new elements of the CPD scheme ahead of the launch of the new scheme and shares her experience:

‘Case-based discussions were a big part of the training at the BSO but we always presented cases to tutors, so I didn’t have as much experience of being the reviewer for someone else. We discussed how to give and receive feedback quite a lot in the webinar and this was very helpful. I arranged to carry out a case-based discussion with another osteopath for an hour via Skype. As a sole practitioner it can be difficult to take time out of the day to go and meet someone, so Skyping made it much more doable for me. I anonymised the case of a patient I had seen recently. It was a complex case involving someone with chronic pain who’d come to see me in desperation. Managing the patient’s expectations was one of my main concerns. So having the opportunity to talk to another osteopath about this case reassured me, in terms of how I’d gone about both treating the patient, and how I’d felt about it. I also had the opportunity to bounce ideas off another practitioner and as a result, following the case-based discussion, my patient has had really good results.’