The European Teaching Group of Orthopaedic Medicine (ETGOM) offers updated orthopaedic medicine cyriax continuing education with emphasis on clinical reasoning. We focus on inspection, history, functional examination, palpation, diagnosis, differential diagnosis and different kinds of soft tissue treatment techniques in the musculoskeletal system such as friction massage, mobilisation, infiltration, injection, traction and manipulation.
ETGOM vzw, European Teaching Group of Orthopaedic Medicine Cyriax is a Belgian association, founded in 1989 by Bob De Coninck, PT. Etgom offers world wide specific and "to the point" continuing education courses and seminars in the updated Cyriax method.
These courses respect the quality standards set by the Global Cyriax Institute and are recognized by different physiotherapy associations throughout the world. Bob De Coninck is a Cyriax teacher since 1969 and was the leader of Dr. Cyriax's International Teaching Team.
He was co-responsible for the training of Cyriax teachers. During about 30 years he had a private practice in De Haan (Belgium), which he combined with his teaching activities. For many years he was, worldwide, the only full-time Cyriax teacher. From may 2006 he officially retired after a long an intense career. In his "Textbook of Orthopaedic Medicine, volume I", Dr. Cyriax refers to Bob De Coninck who offers a teaching facility in orthopaedic medicine (p. 485, eight Edition).
The other Etgom-teachers work daily in their practice and combine this with their teaching activities. It is important for us to stay in contact, as much as possible, with the field-work and integrate new scientific and practical evolutions into our teaching activities.
The Etgom courses are open to : MD's, physical therapists, physical therapist assistants, occupational therapists and certified athletic trainers and graduating students. The courses are available in six different languages : dutch, french, italian, german, english and Slovenian. We also have some video productions in spanish and portuguese version.
Etgom can present, world wide, about 200 course days per year and this makes Etgom an absolute world leader in Cyriax continuing education. The present format of our orthopaedic medicine seminars is the result of a long evolution and a vaste experience, which is still subject to recent interesting scientific and practical evolutions.
Every teacher in the Etgom team has his specific background : we have teachers with a manual therapy background, others have a McKenzie imput or are osteopath D.O.. This opens perspectives for what is concerned a symbiotic discussion during course sessions.
The contents of our courses are confined, purely because of didactical reasons, to a very detailed study of the updated Cyriax method.
We don't approve with so-called "cocktail courses" because of the fact that this is very incomplete and can even be dangerous because automatically important details are missing.
A "cocktail" of examination and treatment techniques can only be interesting after a detailed study of each method separately. However, we strongly believe in making several methods compatible with each other (updated Cyriax and McKenzie go very well together). On our courses we spend about 70% of the total time on practical exercises.
During the practical sessions, we sometimes use personal video-guidance. This enables us to give more practical guidelines to the participant, who can then more rapidly and safely master the techniques. Etgom uses on her courses the most modern audio visual presentation techniques. (e.g. Powerpoint presentation)
For what is concerned the proliferation of our courses Etgom works world wide with independant partners (universities, physical therapy associations, doctors associations, private firms) who organize and offer our courses.
We constantly try to expand our network of organizing partners in order to spread the Cyriax knowledge throughout the world, on a most professional basis. We are also prepared to assist students and PT's with some research projects.
For those who want to joint our team as a teacher we designed a special teachers training program. We gladly welcome motivated colleagues (more information on request).
