The Educational Council on Osteopathic Principles Meets at LUCOM

AACOM’s Educational Council on Osteopathic Principles (ECOP) met on September 19-21 at the Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine (LUCOM) in Lynchburg, VA. The meeting was Dr. Rebecca Giusti’s first as Chair and was hosted by James Kribs, DO, LUCOM Founding Chair of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine and Dean Peter Bell.

Major agenda items of the meeting included incorporating standardized language about osteopathic medicine into the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED). SNOMED is a standardized collection of clinical terminology that can be used by physicians and health care providers to share clinical health information electronically. ECOP is anticipating to finish the five-year project led by Dr’s Deborah Schmidt and John Garlitz in April 2020—one year ahead of schedule. 

Other topics discussed during the meeting included reviewing of terms involved with the fascial distortion method of manipulation, informed consent forms for patients receiving osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) and the review of standard consent forms created by AACOM’s  Professionalism and Ethics Task Force; the publishing of a white paper on sacral biomechanics, a review of undergraduate OMM fellows at COM’s; and a discussion of third- and fourth-year curriculum in OMM, including resources to help provide the curriculum and assess student skills.