This summer has been a very busy month for a variety of Dankmeyer folk!
Let's start with our Clinical Director, Angela Bryl, CPO. Angie, who has been with Dankmeyer since 2006, is nominated for the 2018 Woman of the Year in O&P. Several questions were asked on the nomination form, along the lines of "How has the nominee made significant contributions to O&P and its people?" and "How is she a leader in what she does every day?" While all of us at Dankmeyer think she should get rated five stars for each of the questions answered, we might be slightly biased. We do believe that Angie's patients and the professionals she works with outside of Dankmeyer would agree, so please join us in congratulating her for the nomination! The award will be announced at the annual assembly of the American Orthotics and Prosthetics Association at the end of September.
In other news, an article by Charles Dankmeyer, CPO, appears in the July edition of the O&P News magazine. Charles discusses the various professional organizations surrounding prosthetics and orthotics. These different groups contribute to certification, education, community and healthcare legislation in increasingly important ways to all stakeholders in O&P. "As practicing professional members of the community, we have an obligation to be united in our efforts to improve our profession and thereby improve the quality of life to the community we serve." You can read the article by clicking on this link. If you are interested in the entire issue, you can click here.
This last week we also bid farewell to our two summer interns, Clara Romero Tejera and Shaina Patel. You may have met them when 3DPO introduced them in an earlier post (click here). Before they left, they wrote a summary of their work here:
"We are two engineering students from the University of Maryland and we were lucky to have the opportunity of interning with Dankmeyer during the summer. Throughout our time here we were able to work firsthand with professionals in the Prosthetics/Orthotics field, in turn gaining knowledge in both patient care and prosthetic manufacturing.
In addition, we are developing a 3D-printed swimming prosthesis for an amputee supervised by CPOs. Our project consists of designing an entire prosthesis via engineering software and then 3D printing the design.
We are beyond grateful on the treatment we had working with Dankmeyer, as they made us feel like family, having the freedom of creation and the ability to ask for help or input whenever we had any questions."
We were particularly impressed by Shaina and Clara's innovative designs for the 3D printed swimming prosthesis. They went through several iterations of designs, putting each through a series of successive tests to emulate use of the prosthesis by an active seven year old child. Simulations were run to figure out where the highest points of stress would be when using the prosthesis. They completed a lot of research on existing designs and then further customized the prosthesis to match the needs of their unique patient. Thanks for spending your summer with us, we wish you the best!