How CORA Physical Therapy Leverages Professional Development to Raise Standards
CORA Physical Therapy recognizes that in order to provide the best physical therapy services possible, our staff must be equipped with advanced knowledge and impressive skill sets. So, we invest in our employees and their professional development in a number of innovative ways.
Explore how CORA Physical Therapy’s culture of learning is cultivating the industry’s most sought-after therapists and clinicians, which ultimately leads to better patient outcomes.
Tuition Assistance
CORA understands that its organization cannot stay competitive without investing in its clinicians. Besides paying employees’ annual APTA membership, which includes subscription to journal articles and current research, CORA provides employees $5,250 per year in tuition assistance. This could cover anything from a patient service coordinator returning to school to earn a degree in PTA to a clinic manager obtaining manual therapy certification.
Continuing Education Opportunities
CORA helps employees obtain Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits in a number of ways, including:
- Hosting CEU events and courses for Evidence in Motion (EIM)
- Paying for courses offered by internal clinicians and hosts
- Providing financial support to make CEU credits more attainable for clinicians
In addition to internal CEU credits, CORA also partners to bring in outside courses, for example, Graston, SFMA, and Astym instruction. These courses are typically offered at a discounted rate, saving clinicians time off work, as well as miles traveled to attend the course elsewhere.
CORA offers full-time employees $1,000 every calendar year for continuing education classes and free continuing education courses to all clinicians. CORA employees who are experts on a particular topic teach these in-house courses.
Strategic Partnerships: EIM
As part of its continued pursuit of clinical excellence, in 2016 CORA initiated a partnership with Evidence in Motion (EIM). EIM is rooted in evidence-based practice and offers many CEUs, long-term certification programs, and board-certified specialist preparation courses. As a network partner, every two years we enroll a minimum of 10 clinicians in one of their long-term programs, which are geared toward preparing clinicians for specialist certification.
Mentoring Residents
A residency program allows new graduates, who do not have 2,000 hours of direct patient care as a physical therapist, to sit for the Orthopedic Certified Specialist (OCS) exam, often within a year of graduation. CORA’s residency program includes online courses, hands-on weekend intensive courses, and clinical practice hours.
EIM offers their Residency program through the American Board of Physical Therapy Residency & Fellowship Education (ABPTRFE), the accrediting body of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). CORA then fosters placement into EIM’s APTA accredited post-professional clinical residency programs, which gives licensed PTs a chance to advance their skills through Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). As an EIM partner, CORA’s certified specialists serve as mentors for residents. EIM provides the specific training and framework for this program, further helping grow our mentors as teachers.
Achieving Results
With the ambitious goal of more than doubling the organization’s clinician count every year, CORA encourages clinicians to register for the manual therapy certification and the OCS board certification preparation course, and subsequently take the exam.
CORA offered more than 10 internal courses over the course of 2017, with topics ranging from CrossFit to gait analysis to Medicare documentation. In 2018, we plan to offer courses on topics including concussion, clinical prediction rule, Direct Access, and more.
Our organization strives to provide the best patient experiences and outcomes and to continue leading in the physical and occupational therapy field. With so many talented therapists on staff, it only makes sense for us to share our wealth of knowledge with as many individuals as possible.
Interested in propelling your career in physical therapy? Head over to our Careers page or contact us to discuss your future with our incredible team.
