Episode 33, Season 2: Chuck and Chris welcome Rachel Pigott and Nora Barrett, the President and Annual Meeting Chair, respectfully, of the American Society of Hand Therapists to discuss the ASHT Annual Meeting in St. Louis, October 7th-10th. They share insights about the ASHT and specifics about the annual meeting including highlights. Its going to be a great meeting with some focus on nerve but a complete coverage of all pertinent hand therapist topics. Note this podcast is abbreviated- the full, uncut version is on You Tube.
As always, thanks to @iampetermartin for the amazing introduction and conclusion music.
theupperhandpodcast.wustl.edu. And thanks to Eric Zhu, aspiring physician and podcast intern.
Survey Link:
Help Chuck and Chris understand better what you like and what we can improve. And be entered for drawing to win a mug! https://bit.ly/349aUvz
Episode 33, Season 2: Chuck and Chris welcome Rachel Pigott and Nora Barrett, the President and Annual Meeting Chair, respectfully, of the American Society of Hand Therapists to discuss the ASHT Annual Meeting in St. Louis, October 7th-10th. They share insights about the ASHT and specifics about the annual meeting including highlights. Its going to be a great meeting with some focus on nerve but a complete coverage of all pertinent hand therapist topics. Note this podcast is abbreviated- the full, uncut version is on You Tube.
As always, thanks to @iampetermartin for the amazing introduction and conclusion music.
theupperhandpodcast.wustl.edu. And thanks to Eric Zhu, aspiring physician and podcast intern.
Survey Link:
Help Chuck and Chris understand better what you like and what we can improve. And be entered for drawing to win a mug! https://bit.ly/349aUvz
Welcome to the upper hand where Chuck and Chris talk hand surgery.
Chris Dy:We are two hand surgeons at Washington University in St. Louis here to talk about all aspects of hand surgery from technical to personal.
Charles Goldfarb:Thank you for subscribing wherever you get your podcasts.
Chris Dy:And be sure to leave a review that helps us get the word out.
Charles Goldfarb:Oh, hey, Chris.
Chris Dy:Hey, Chuck, how are you?
Charles Goldfarb:I'm doing great. It's a special night.
Chris Dy:It is a special night. Special update. I'm still in the basement. I've had multiple people text me asking if I'm still homeless, and I guess they've been listening to the podcast.
Charles Goldfarb:Yes, homeless is relative. But homeless you are.
Chris Dy:Yes, indeed, it is relative. So I'm very excited. We have two special guests. Before we welcome them. I wanted to share a funny anecdote. So I was in Grand Rounds this week. And at the end of Grand Rounds, a medical student comes up and introduces himself says, oh, Dr. Dy, I really wanted to say hello, my name is I won't say his name. He's probably listening. And he's like, I'm a visiting student from philony institution in the Midwest slash south. And he says, You know, I was on a rotation there. And we had to go to a surgery center. And I started listening to the podcast you and Dr. Goldfarb had, I just want to tell you how much I love it. And I just had to say hello to you.
Charles Goldfarb:I love it. I love it. I want to share an anecdote too since Chris shared one, actually, I was biking into work this morning. And I was listening to "make me smart," which is one of the NPR podcasts, which I really like. And this just resonated with me. And again, maybe I just don't know what I don't know. But I didn't know this. And so there's a social psychologist named Amy Cuddy, or Cuddy who they had on the, on the show. And she used the expression. In discussion of the pandemic and how we're all handling it, she used the expression surge capacity, which I thought was really good, because it basically to try to paraphrase her, you know, we have gotten through now a really long time in the pandemic, and we can all kind of, to varying degrees, we can all handle so much stress, or so much anxiety or so much uncertainty at different points is too much. And so handling, you know, our surge capacity might be running out, at least for some of us, you know, we're just getting tired of this. I think that was what was so challenging about this summer, when we all had so much optimism that we're coming out of this and then bam, we are not. Anyways, I thought that was super interesting and appreciation anecdote, I'm darn well, I'm gonna share one too.
Chris Dy:I actually really like Amy Cuddy's work. I haven't heard her talk in a while. But she spoke a lot. I think about three or four years ago, I read her book about presence and the power pose and I that that helped me a lot as I was establishing myself as an early career academic.
Charles Goldfarb:Absolutely. Is this like the super Superman pose before you go on stage?
Chris Dy:It is it is going into the bathroom and puffing your chest out. And you know, looking at yourself saying I can do this, which is what I do before every podcast because you make me super nervous. Yes, little power posing. But yes. I look forward maybe I'll check out make me, is it Make me smart?
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah, it's with Kai and Molly. It's really good. Really good.
Chris Dy:Did they pay you to plug their podcast?
Charles Goldfarb:I'm hoping they'll plug us back in case they're listening. But you know.
Chris Dy:I'm sure that I'm sure that'll happen. So really excited. We're here with two wonderful hand therapists we have Rachel Pigott, she's joining us from Maryland. So Rachel is the president of the American Society for hand therapists. She has been an OT since 1999. She additionally has her MPH which she received from UMass Amherst. So she's a CHT. She's got additional certifications and lymphedema. And she is the ASHT president and she's got a special interest in equity in in health care. And we look forward to having you join us tonight, Rachel.
Rachel Pigott:Yeah, it's really nice to be able to join you guys for your podcast and be able to talk a little bit about annual meeting and just chat and get to know each other a little bit better because you guys are gonna be awesome presenters at the meeting. So.
Chris Dy:Yes, we're very excited. Hopefully we haven't exceeded our search capacity by that point.
Rachel Pigott:No, never.
Chris Dy:And would also like to welcome Nora Barrett. Nora, thank you for joining us tonight. Nora actually graduated here from Washington St. Louis, and with her master's in OT, and she has additional training became a CHT after training at Drexel. So right now, she is joining us from Bend, Oregon but she has worked on the East Coast at some of the famous hand surgery institutions including the Curtis national hand center, and she The program chair for this year's ASHT meeting. And she picked some really good speakers this year. Nora, I will say that I was talking to some of your colleagues from Washington University in St. Louis. And somebody warned me that if we're recording an episode, we should tell you this is a clean family show that there, I mean, some words, some four letter words might come out at some point. I told her No, all the interactions I've had with Nora are fantastic. I don't understand why, why that would be a concern. But clearly, you left an impression on folks here in St. Louis, and we're looking forward to having you join us tonight.
Nora Barrett:I'll try to keep it as clean as I can.
Charles Goldfarb:Maybe those were in your nerve clinic, Chris, those four letter words, who knows.
Chris Dy:Hey, we made it through a nerve clinic today and nobody cried. So total win.
Nora Barrett:That's a good day.
Rachel Pigott:That's a really high bar you've got there, not crying.
Chris Dy:I will say on Monday, on Monday, I started my clinic off with the first patient had tears, but tears of joy because of the needle aponeurotomy. She had not seen her finger straight in years. So I'll take that one.
Rachel Pigott:Okay, so those are good tears.
Chris Dy:Yeah, that usually the the not great tears outweigh the good tears.
Charles Goldfarb:I have said it before, there are very few things that I do that give greater patient satisfaction than the needle aponeurotomy procedure. I mean, I don't know if I've gotten tears before. But I've gotten a lot of satisfied patients.
Chris Dy:Nora and Rachel, thanks for joining us. I was hoping maybe Rachel, you could start off by telling us about what it's been like to be to be the ASHT president in the second year of the pandemic.
Rachel Pigott:Yeah, sure. So um, so I feel like, you know, it seemed like something that was a big task was coming my way and might be kind of overwhelming. But I feel like the year I have had is a really good example of how important it is to have a really good team. My whole board is very cohesive. I have a board of hard workers, and it extends beyond the board. So I think, you know, like leadership is top down the whole, like our education, division is very strong practice is very strong research is very strong. So there's all this work that's going on. And sometimes when you look around and kind of see everything that's happening, I kind of think how in the world do we get all this done. And then the whole time, we're kind of also monitoring, of course, because we've got the annual meeting coming up. And we're trying to get to in person, that's our, our plan. And goal is what we're aiming for. Keeping the pulse on the pandemic, and all the public health recommendations from all of the local and national leaders, CDC and local health boards. And all that is adds a little layer. But it's amazing, you know, how much of the work can be less stressful when you have a great group of people to work with. So I feel like there's always something coming at me. But whenever it comes at me it, it usually comes at me as not just a problem but a problem with the proposed solution. And then we kind of just modify things from there and figure out the best option. So it's been a really, really wonderful experience. And really, it's not just one year, there, there's one year where you tend to be in a position of influence, but it's it's a lot of years of serving, where you get to know a lot of people that help you grow as an individual. So that's been really rewarding. Yeah.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah, that's, that's really well said. And I think, you know, Chris, and I have both been involved with national positions. And I think it Some people say, Well, why do you do it? And certainly is to give back and to have an influence on the direction of our organizations. But it's it there's also a selfish reasons, you know, we grow and we gain from these things as well. So we have listeners of all of a wide range, you know, we have therapists, we have students, we have residents, we have fellows, attendings give us a little sense, I'll be honest, I don't know some of the facts about the size and scope of the ASHT. Just give us give us a sense of kind of who you guys are.
Rachel Pigott:So our membership is around 3500 people. We have I think somewhere around 170 to 200 active volunteers that are helping things run. So that's therapist members that are volunteering their time to serve. And then we have a professional staff which are really amazing, that support us and help to operationalize things. And so the different divisions, we have our education, so they're in charge of developing educational products. And that's not just courses, they come up with a wide variety of things. Like there's some tools they have to help with mentorship, because that's a form of learning. And a lot of different things with a lot of different projects they work on. They're very, very busy division, our practice division keeps tabs on things that influence practice. So legislative kinds of things, regulatory things state base nationally. So they're, they're really busy. And we also have a legislative consultant that works with them in keeping their ear to the ground on anything that might be influencing our field. And so they're also connected with AOTA, the American Occupational Therapy Association and APTA, the American Physical Therapy Association, the hand and upper extremity Academy. So they're always kind of working together. So we can have, you know, a bigger voice when you have multiple groups working together. We have the Research Division, who facilitate therapists been engaged with evidence informed practice. They also review our surveys that come in, they run a research chat once a month, I think it's once a month that is free see ease. We have we have, we have committees, too, we have standing committees, we have an international committee that looks that brings that we usually have an international speaker and international luncheon at the annual meeting. They also are working with IFSHT with developing a developing country and developing a relationship to help to collaborate and provide resources for those developing countries. Um, let's see what else we have the tech comm committee, who also has a who kind of works with messaging, social messaging and communications of what hand therapy as they have a big role in hand therapy week, which is in June, they did something really fun this this year, they did art. I don't think this is the first year but they did daily challenges. And one of them was I did this one, it was such a hot mess. fabricating orthosis, blindfolded I planned very poorly, was a real mess. But anyway, they really did a good job of promoting hand therapy week. And then this year, we developed a new committee that got approved by the bylaw, a bylaws vote that happened in May. And that's the diversity Equity and Inclusion committee. So they're just getting started with they're working, they're going to be working with a consultant to help to guide their work thoughtfully to improve diversity in our field and create a truly like expansively inclusive society, and hopefully, promote equity for the services we provide to those we care for. I think that's everything I talked a lot.
Chris Dy:It shows you, shows you how broad your portfolio is for your organization. I mean, that's wonderful. It sounds like you've covered all of the major and other issues that you really could could foresee as touching the the practice of hand therapy. Now I have a burning question. I have never had a National Society meeting here in St. Louis. And I'm super excited about it. And really hoping the pandemic stuff works out so that it can actually happen in person who decided on St. Louis and I noticed that it's it's been in St. Louis before and I think it might be on the list again. So what keeps you guys coming back to the, to our city?
Rachel Pigott:Well, it's, it's a great location for a variety of different reasons. So if you want to talk planning and logistics is kind of Central in the country. So it's helpful for people getting to and from and our management company just kind of like puts out RFPs to different locations and things like that. And then they bring that back to us and we come up with the best location. But one thing that I think is really cool about St. Louis is you guys have such a strong, I feel like hand surgery, hand therapy presence, that like it's a really natural fit for this particular meeting. Because we have a lot of local people. And I think that's really cool for a national meeting to be able to bring a little bit of the flavor of the local community into the meeting. And really kind of get to learn that community a little bit better from those that are serving in the community. So.
Charles Goldfarb:Well, we're happy you're here, and I am just super excited. So let's so how did I want to hear from Nora? For sure. So Nora, I don't know if you want to share or maybe Rachel can but how did you end up as program chair and how I probably most of your hard work is already done. But how's it been planning for this major meeting?
Nora Barrett:So interestingly enough, I have actually done this Before I was chair back in 2017, when we had a meeting in Anaheim, which was another fun place, we had kind of the Disney theme going with that one. And but we did the same thing, and I strongly believe, to pull in local talent. And I think that's a huge part. So when we assemble a committee of members that help us plan the meeting, I always prefer to have at least one or two local therapists from the area who can help us identify excellent speakers and physicians. I think one of the major things I pull for is having physicians at our meetings, especially with the seasoned therapist, we've got a lot of folks that are senior veteran therapists who we want to make sure they get just as much out of the meeting as say these newer folks are some students even we've been definitely trying to pull in students, which is a great feature in St. Louis as well, with the OT and PT schools. So basically, the way it works is I think it doesn't the answer to organizations is there's an elected board, but then there's chairs that are basically selected. And what happens when you room with Rachel Piggott at several meetings over I don't know, a six or seven year span is that she looks at you and says, Well, you went to Wash U and you know, St. Louis, and you've done this before, and hey, can you please do this, do this again. And even if you're like, I swear, I wouldn't do it a second time you say, okay, Rachel's a good egg. I'll do it for her. So that's how it happened. But you've got it, you've got to be a good egg recipe. It's all about the president too. I mean, it's definitely somebody you work very closely with who you trust to. And obviously, it has to go the same way. There's a lot of decisions made. There's a lot of communication talk. and developing also, not only the theme, but but what what do you want to see at this meeting, and I obviously knowing St. Louis and having been to Wash U and, and but in the area, it's a nerve powerhouse. And so my head immediately goes to Okay, we've got the peripheral nerve capital in in the US, let's, let's get these folks, let's get a couple local therapists on our committees, let's identify surgeons that we would really like to see at our meeting, because ultimately, my job is to put on a strong educational content meeting that will draw our therapists. It's been a little bit different. Obviously, last year, we moved to pure virtual, a little bit earlier on, we had planned for a full meeting, we're supposed to be in San Antonio, that obviously did not happen about April, we shifted to pure virtual for October, this year is different because we actually were on site in October, we went I'm sorry, in July, we went to St. Louis, we checked out the hotel, we toured it, we are planning for a much smaller meeting that's capped in number, but we also have the virtual component. So there is that that flexibility piece, but the situation was definitely better than it is right now. But we have essentially stuck with our plan of we're trying for an in person meeting, we have things in place like mask mandates within the organization itself, we cannot require people to be vaccinated, but we are obviously strongly recommending it, we will have seating three feet apart, and we've kept the number at 400. But the virtual is open. So so those are the things we're really pushing for. And obviously we're keeping in touch with the hotel staff is keeping us in touch with our organization daily based on the Department of Health, St. Louis and Missouri guidelines, just so we can obviously keep it as safe as possible. But we're really, really hoping and pulling for that in person meeting.
Charles Goldfarb:I know Chris, and I have additional questions just about the content, which I think is one of the main things, we want to get out to the listeners. But I will say I'll share good news. One of the good things about living in Missouri, in a pandemic is things got really bad here with the Delta variant really early. And so Wow, it looks like and I don't want to jinx us. But we looks like we are coming down off the high point of the curve in Missouri or Missouri, depending on what you want to call us. And that's good. Because these these curves do tend to be predictable. So the last couple of weeks have been flat or slightly down. So fingers crossed that you guys had this meeting at exactly the right time. We have what, six weeks or so. So it could work out really
Chris Dy:So I wanted to ask the I wanted to ask a question. So well. Rachel, as a practicing hand therapist, what session Are you looking forward to the most aside from of course, the live taping of the upper hand. And then Nora, as the program chair, that you put together everything here. What session Do you think hand surgeons would be really interested in, in listening to?
Rachel Pigott:So I'm gonna pick two, maybe three, kind of, so I'm really looking forward to the invited presidential lecture. Who is William Ross or Wilbur Ross, and he is a physician, that's also MPH epidemiologist from from Wash U and he's going to be talking about health equity, and the plurality of health equity. So I think that'll be a really interesting presentation. And then after that there's a health equity panel, which is an interprofessional panel. That includes Dr. Ross. It also includes somebody from the brown School of Public Health, Darrell Hudson, to occupational therapists, Quinn Tyminski, and Duana Thomas, it also includes a physical therapist from St. Louis University. Barbara Yemm. So it's, it includes both schools and includes a wide variety of disciplines. And it's a, I think, important topic for all of us. I'm also looking forward to the presentation. I think it's on Thursday night, Nora can help me if I'm wrong on the brachial plexus presentation that I think is that you Dr. Dy, Yeah, and I can't remember the therapist off the top of my head, but you, you also have a patient involved, right? The stakeholder I love that. Like I love that. It's including the the patient's perspective, because that's such an important component of health care, that I think really helps to improve quality. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that one, too.
Chris Dy:Yes, we're gonna have a I'm really, really looking forward to this because I think it's it's a wonderful opportunity. So I think both of you for the chance to do it. We're going to present a session. That's about looking beyond just the nerve part of it. So beyond what hand surgeons or peripheral nervous surgeons and hand therapists do, but looking at how to approach the patient as a whole. This is very much in line with, you know, a lot of the work we've been doing over the last few years. We're going to have myself, Jamie Findeiss, a wonderful CHT that I work with on a regular basis for many of our patients, as well as a pain psychologist, Dr. Sarah Buday from the WashU pain service, a patient advocate from the United brachial plexus network, Christopher Janney, and also one of my patients is brave enough to come speak. So a current patient of mine, Sam Watts is going to speak about his journey as he goes through. He's living this right now. So I think it's gonna be a really fun blend of perspectives. And my job is just to set the stage and get out of the way.
Charles Goldfarb:So we'll, we, Chris, I know, at least some of the people you mentioned and Will Ross is Awesome, so that you're right, that is going to be a highlight. So congratulations for planning that both of you. All right, Nora, tell us a little bit more about what you are looking forward to on the program.
Nora Barrett:Obviously, specialty is going to it's going to weigh in, but one of my other favorites is obviously that opening night, the gateway to the nervous system panel, we've got a panel of experts, which also does include Dr. Dy. and includes Dr. Susan McKinnon, as well as Dr. Holly Power, who trained at Wash U and is now at University of Alberta who's done a lot of work in nerve transfers. And then Lorna Khan, who is an outstanding physical therapist who has worked for a long time with Dr. McKinnon. And so you for are going to basically give us a an update of kind of where we stand from a peripheral nerve injury perspective. And I think that's always appreciated, just because that is I think one of the biggest things that is still evolving. And another topic that therapists especially if they don't see nerve transfers, don't always feel very comfortable with but as WashU and several other institutions are training more and more fellows, who are then going out into different positions, more and more people are starting to see these surgeries and kind of don't know where to start, don't know where to begin. And so I'm super excited about that session. And I think that will be a great update for everyone. But from a certain perspective, there's so many therapy driven sessions as well, that I think it might be interesting from a surgeon perspective to see kind of what we do, or the hands on aspect of a lot of these different topics. I mean, everything from manual techniques to treat elbow injuries to spinal cord injury and surgical techniques with Dr. Ida Fox, who's going to go over some motor transfers for that aspect. We've got hands on workshops in in the beginning of our session, which are separate their pre conference institutions, but we've got orthotic sessions in there. We've got another session that Dr. Dy will be helping us with, with cadaver dissection focusing on nerve because we're in St. Louis. So there is there's a plethora of topics and information. We've got a bunch of different sports and athletic topics. So I think we're going to cover it all up but I am also excited about your upper hand session. I have hand selected my roommate and great friend from WashU Becky Neiduski to moderate that and I think that'll be super fun, especially highlighting trauma which which I love. Blood and guts is my favorites and especially the tendon aspect. That's one of Becky's favorite topics too. And I think that's another one that therapists are always craving for is a little bit of tendon talk. So we're psyched For that one too.
Chris Dy:Just one thing that caught my eye on the program that I thought was really interesting was the kind of the more casual sessions. So I noticed that you've got, for example, a happy hour with a scholar, you've got student meetups, I mean, these all sound like really interesting ideas that can, you know, allow a lot of people to network and meet people that are outside of their normal group of collaborators or colleagues. Can you comment on how those sessions came about and what the goal is for those?
Nora Barrett:I definitely can so happy hour with a scholar was originally a breakfast meeting. And it was 630 in the morning, on either a Friday or Saturday, and it got a lot of complaints. And so a pretty well known hand therapist, when I was going into my first time as chair back in 2017 said to me, oh, dear God, can we please do something about this breakfast meeting. And in my natural form, I said, Well, I think we should make it a happy hour. So that's essentially how that came to be. But initially, we were not allowed to call it that. So we named it something else. But it became the after, you know, the after educational session part of the day, and it was later in the day, this is back in LA, and it was a hit, it went off really well. There was an not an open bar, it wasn't that big of a hit. But it was a cash bar. And donations became extremely generous, as people were enjoying themselves. And so the American hand therapy foundation decided, well, this is a much better idea than people half asleep at breakfast, who are not opening their wallets as much. So the year after they were allowed to call it happy hour with a scholar. And then it came to be, we always had a scholarly person give a great lecture, but it was much more interesting with a glass in your hand at six 6:30pm than AM. And so that's how that came to be. And so the now the foundation continues to identify a speaker each year that they think is a good draw and will give a good, give a good topic. And it's not necessarily always related to hand therapy, per se, but it's someone known in the hand therapy world. And so and so that's how that one came to be. And then the student meetup is a newer feature, we end up with a lot of lunches as well, putting together different committees, committee meetings, but also just different groups, especially now with things like telehealth or folks that are really specialized in smaller areas like pediatric hand therapy, those are the benefits of having live in person meetings is we can put these people together, and they can share ideas, and it's a lot easier than doing it. Yes, we can do it, you know, virtually, and it would be it would be you know, meeting up, you know, over a computer, but the face to face interaction is truly something we all value and putting these people together to have those interactions is, is obviously why we why we're doing what we're doing and what we're aiming for and why we're continue to push forward even during this pandemic. And the students is another aspect that we really tried to engage. So we've we've got a person on our education division who is solely in charge of helping to engage the students in the area at SLU, and Wash U and any other institution, we actually have a couple students speakers as well. And so we've always tried to engage that. And we also have always had watched us students help us with one of our courses when we are in St. Louis, for our hand therapy review course, that is one of our four locations amd WashU Students have always been a part of our program there to help with the tech, we allow them to come in on the program. We don't give them CEUs, which they technically don't need, but they're allowed to sit on the program the entire time. And so we've engaged with WashU for quite some time and now have a really good relationship with them. So that's definitely something we want to continue to build and to prosper.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah, it sounds awesome. I, so two comments. One, it's always interesting to me what our fellows get anxious about as their year comes to a close, and we are so fortunate at Washington University to work with just fantastic therapists to our in our clinics with us and just to help with patient care, help educate us. And so the fellows get really nervous about what happens when they leave fellowship, and not understanding all that goes by goes on behind the curtain with therapy. So about a month or two before they start to realize that oh my god, I got to figure some of this out. And so you're right it is it is something that all of us can learn more about. The second thing is really the most important thing I'm going to say tonight is in St. Louis. We do other things besides nerve some of us do not live and die by nerve. So let that be known to everyone that there are other things like sports and congenital that we also do well in St. Louis.
Nora Barrett:Dr. Goldfarb to your point I will echo that we've got served we have I think we have of a physician therapist combinations. We've got one in our pre conference Institute, we have three plenary panels that have surgeon therapist interactions and we actually have eight concurrent sessions. So everything from evaluating the spinal, spinal nervous system from a peripheral to Central view and determining is it c spine versus peripheral problems to basal joint arthritis to a sports talk. So I will say that you're correct. We are hammering home some nerve topics. But we do have a really good mix in combination, including local surgeons. So we're, we're thrilled for that as well.
Charles Goldfarb:Totally understandable. Thank you for sharing the details. Now let's go back to something we've already discussed. That is, this will be a hybrid meeting. And you guys are keeping a close eye on the lay of the land in St. Louis regarding COVID. And tell us why you think the hybrid meeting is important this year, but also just in general.
Rachel Pigott:Yeah, and, and I was gonna say one other thing, on top of what Nora just said, I think the fact that we have the hybrid where it's in person, and virtual isn't is, is important, because then that helps us to be able to respect everybody's comfort level with whichever environment they prefer to learn in, especially given our current societal situation. So I think that's important. But I think it also helped us to having virtual last year and then having the hybrid this year, hopefully, it'll be hybrid both being offered is that it helps us to see how important having a virtual is for accessibility, because there's some therapists that and a lot of comments we had on the survey, we sent out about preferences with the meeting. And the virtual meeting was that people were really happy to have the ability to attend because some people have limited CE reimbursement and it's it is expensive to travel and to stay at a hotel on top of the cost of the meeting. So, you know, it really helped us to see how important it was to have that as an option to improve accessibility of that product that a lot of people don't have access to ordinarily.
Nora Barrett:As well as Yeah, as well as to get away from kids and families. That's definitely something we recognized last year, we had so many first time attendees. And so we basically went back to them and said, okay, you know, what was it obviously, the pandemic was what drove it. But there were people who would never able to take off four or five days, fly to a meeting, pay for a hotel, pay for meals, get away from a family a job. So now I think and I think part of organization was asking for this before. But there's one good thing in the pandemic, it essentially drove us to it, it forced us into that situation. And I don't know that we'll ever not have it. Now. It's a definite benefit, we will be recording every single lecture that happens to all of our plenary sessions, our main sessions will be live recorded, but also available later. And then each of even the concurrent sessions will be recorded. Not everything will be available for a CE credit, because there are times where four courses are going on at once. But that content will be available. And so I think that is a definite benefit to our membership.
Charles Goldfarb:I love it, it has struck me that I do miss these meetings, you know, when we had meetings all the time, and you've kind of feel like you're forced to go to meetings, they kind of get old, but now that we haven't had meetings, kind of the in person touches really been missed. So this has been fantastic. Thank you both. And I think I'll turn it over Rachel for the final word about the ASHT meeting in St. Louis in early October.
Rachel Pigott:Oh, man, the final word. Ooh pressure Okay, okay, I'm gonna get myself together here. Um, so I guess what I will say is that we're hopeful to be able to all get together and and learn from all these great topics we we've heard about that are going to be presented from all these wonderful speakers and be able to have face to face interaction with our colleagues. And we'll, of course, be striving to do this in the most safe way possible, and try to be very responsible and keeping our ears to the ground on what's going on with everything in our society, particularly on light with a pandemic. But we really hope to see everybody in St. Louis in October.
Chris Dy:Thanks for joining us, both Rachel and Nora, we're looking forward to it for sure. And even if the meeting ends up not being in person, which obviously we're hoping that it will be. I'll be at the Marriott I'll just present directly from the Marriott lobby. So if anybody's in St. Louis, they can join me there.
Charles Goldfarb:Hey, Chris, that was fun. Let's do it again real soon.
Chris Dy:Sounds good. Well, be sure to check us out on Twitter@handpodcast. Hey Chuck, what's your Twitter handle?
Charles Goldfarb:Mine is@congenitalhand. What about you?
Chris Dy:Mine is @ChrisDyMD spelled d y. And if you'd like to email us, you can reach us at hand podcast@gmail.com.
Charles Goldfarb:And remember, please subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts
Chris Dy:And be sure to leave a review that helps us get the word out.
Charles Goldfarb:Special thanks to Peter Martin for the amazing music. And remember, keep the upper hand. Come back next time.