President's Message

Spring is officially here, and I hope everyone is enjoying the warm weather. It was great to see many of you at CSM and it felt great to be back in person at such a large event! Here in Virginia, we hope to be having more in person events as restrictions gradually begin to lift in many areas.

 

On this note, we have gotten many questions regarding the position of APTA Virginia on wearing masks in the workplace. As it is now and will continue to be, APTA VA does not have an official position on mask usage and urge people to defer to the CDC and VA DHP guidelines. As you can imagine we represent clinicians in a wide variety of settings and there is no one size fits all recommendation, and similarly do not take an official position for individual specialties or practice settings. The CDC and DHP guidelines are constantly changing which presents a challenge, and each county and region may enforce different mandates based on the professional setting. There is a large gray area open for interpretation and a good deal of variability from one facility to another. We realize this can be frustrating for patients, clinicians, and practice managers alike. We are happy to answer any questions or offer resources as best as we can. Hopefully soon this will all be a non-issue.

 

I also wanted to remind everyone that we have some fantastic continuing education opportunities coming up. The first is our Spring Education event which will be held Saturday, April 23 at Old Dominion University. Check out our website for details including how to register. At APTA Virginia, we are getting more excited as we continue to rev up for our new educational program ‘Virginia is for Learners,’ which will kick off July of this year and offer both virtual and in-person courses throughout the state every other month. Don’t miss out and keep an eye open for offerings coming to your region.

 

Sincerely,

 

Tony Grillo, PT, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT