Course Description:

Principles of Manual Medicine is a combination of didactic, lectures and “hands-on” experience sufficient to understand the principles involved in the diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal disorders amenable to osteopathic manual medicine/therapy methods. Emphasis will be placed on the integration of manual therapy into total health care. Manual therapy is a specialized physical therapy method that utilizes specific, hands-on techniques without the assistance of devices or machines. Traditional physical therapy focuses on managing and treating the symptoms of the disease process, while manual therapy focuses more on performing biomechanics, tissue-based examination to identify the cause of the disease process. This course is available to licensed clinicians whose scope of practice includes manual therapy or manipulation and is 30% didactic lectures and 70% hands-on training. This course has been taught since 1973, with the addition of physical therapists to the teaching faculty in 1982.