Imagine an All-American college football player, a foot and ankle fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeon, and your new AOAO President all wrapped up in one. That would be Terry Philbin, DO, FAOAO!
Dr. Philbin was inducted as the 76th President of the AOAO at our recent annual meeting in Colorado Springs, CO. Graduating from CCOM, he did his ortho residency at Doctors Hospital in Columbus and then completed a prestigious Foot and Ankle Fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. He currently is a cornerstone at Orthopedic Foot and Ankle, a sub-specialty practice in Worthington, OH.
In college at Millikin University in Decatur, IL he played football as an offensive guard and tackle. As a team Captain he achieved All American, Academic All American, and has been inducted into the Millikin Athletic Hall of Fame.
Ever since he was a kid, Dr. Philbin has been a die-hard Notre Dame fan. His love of football and Notre Dame culminated into a Fantasy Football competition five times in the Notre Dame Stadium! Although it is officially flag football, it’s played in full pads and “on the line we really get after it”.
A lifetime sports fanatic, he remains active in physical fitness and weight lifting. Running is now difficult as his knees have paid the price of college football on the offensive line, but football is still in his blood. For 25 years he has covered high school football, For The Love of The Game!
Dr. Philbin and his wife, Cyd, are still busy with their three children, Allyson (24), Hailey (24), and Ryan (20). All are justifiably proud of their accomplished husband and father!
Send a note of congratulations to Terry at terryphilbin@gmail.com.
Editor’s Note: Beginning with this issue, The Orthopod will publish the Presidential Acceptance Speech which is given at the Awards Ceremony during the Annual Fall Meeting. This year’s Presidential Acceptance Speech was given at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs on Oct 25, 2019. Please read the inspirational speech given by our incoming President, Dr. Terry Philbin!
Get Involved
I am humbled and honored to be the 76th president of the American Osteopathic Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. I would like to congratulate all of the fellow candidates today and their families on receiving their fellow awards for the AOAO.
I know that anything that we achieve in life we never do alone and for that reason I would like to do several thank you’s. First, I would like to congratulate and thank Steve Morton our outgoing AOAO President. I would like to thank the AOAO Board for their commitment and hard work and trying to always to improve the AOAO. I specifically would like to thank Lee [Vander Lugt, Executive Director] and Joye [Stewart, Association Manager]; they are the heart and soul of the AOAO. Without them, none of this would be possible.
I would like to thank any of my previous trainers from Doctor’s Hospital that are here in the audience, specifically Dr. Peter Johnston who has always been a huge mentor to me and a huge pioneer for all osteopathic orthopedics but especially for anyone in central Ohio. I would also like to thank Dr. Tom Baker for being another mentor of mine and for being the program director at the Doctor’s Hospital Residency which I think is the best Residency in the country and recently helping the Residency to get across the ACGME finish line. I would like to thank my partners from the Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Center who are here today with their wives. I really appreciate you being here. Our group is really unique in that we have MD’s, DO’s, and DPM’s all working together.
We all come from different backgrounds but at the end of the day we all have one common goal and that is excellence in patient care, research and education. We have trained more osteopathic orthopedic residents than any program in the country in foot and ankle; additionally we have trained more osteopathic orthopedists as Fellows than any Fellowship in the country and I am extremely proud of that.
I would also like to thank my family and please when I say your name, I would like you to stand up. First, I want to thank my brother Phil Philbin and his wife Sherry Philbin. I want to thank you for your continuous support of me and my family. I thank you for being here and I love you. I would like to thank my children Alison, Hailey and Ryan. I am extremely proud of all 3 of you and the young adults that you have become and I love you very much. Lastly and most importantly, I want to thank my wife Cydney who is my best friend and my soul mate. I cannot even begin to put into words what you have meant to my life and I just thank God every day that I get to share it with you. Thank you, I love you.
Now that we have gotten through this more emotional part, I would like to briefly just say a couple of words of why I became involved in AOAO and what my major goal is for this next year. I recently read an article that talked about different generations and groups feeling entitled. Physicians were among one of those groups, which was very surprising to me. Physicians work extremely hard and the burnout rates are higher than ever and the suicide rates among physicians are higher than ever. Young physicians want to do their work and get home to their families. Who can blame them? Older physicians have put in their time and the last thing they want is to attend another meeting. The article cited that this is what insurance companies are counting on, for example, when they make us jump through hoops to get an MRI approved. I then thought back to when I first finished my Fellowship and went into practice. I was a “time clock puncher” doc. Then I remembered what I learned from Dr. Peter Johnston. The only way to make a change is to be involved and pay it forward.
Let me give you a brief example of why I’m glad I became more involved and would recommend that you do the same. Many years ago, one of the main hospital systems where we work was in the process of discussing a new mandate where we would have to provide our patients with scrub brushes that they would use the night before surgery, and again the day before surgery. The hospital system was going to make us provide these to patients at our office. This would require us to keep an inventory of scrub brushes, which could have ultimately changed some of the efficiencies we worked very hard to achieve. Certainly if the literature showed this process was worth doing, and was going to prevent infections, then it was a process we would do. But we were very skeptical as to whether or not that was the case. So, our journal club reviewed all of the articles about these scrub brushes. We invited some administrators to attend our journal club meeting.
What we found was that the articles contained very poorly done research and that the only patients or subset of patients with statistically significant impact were patients scheduled for belly surgery of some kind. The findings were not applicable to foot and ankle orthopedists or knees or shoulders. After discussing these findings with our colleagues at the hospital, the decision was made to retract this policy, probably saving the hospital millions of dollars simply because several of us got involved. So my point is, as much as we all hate to go to meetings if you are not at those meetings and you’re not involved, you are not going to influence any change ever. That is the main reason I got involved in the AOAO.
I have had a lot of people, including residents ask me if the AOAO will around after the Single Accreditation System is complete. Like it or not, Single Accreditation is here. I am happy to report that most osteopathic orthopedic residencies will continue but unfortunately there will be a handful that will not make it. My response to the residents who ask me about the longevity of the AOAO is that we need the AOAO more now than ever before. If you have ever been to an AAOS conference, it is a great meeting. There is great education. But so many people attend that it is hard to navigate where you are supposed to be and how to get to the right lecture. In a sense, you almost feel like a number and most people find value in being able to talk to the speaker, to have a dialogue with them in text or emails later on. There are other regional orthopedic courses that 10 years ago would not even recognize us as surgeons and wouldn’t allow us to come to their meetings.
So, the bottom line is the AOAO is our home. It is what gives us our osteopathic distinctiveness. It is where you come to see all of the people that you trained with, it is where you come to get great education, CME, and develop relationships that will help improve your practice. Our CME committee, lead by Dennis Blackburn, DO, has done an excellent job overseeing the development of our educational conferences.
The answer to the question “Do we need the AOAO in the future?”, is “yes.” It is my biggest goal this year to take any steps needed to ensure that we have the Academy into the 2020’s and beyond. I would like to offer my cell phone number, 614-284-9800. At any time if you have any questions about the AOAO, or you have any ways that we can improve things, feel free to give me a call or send me a text anytime. Please include your name but keep in mind I may potentially ask you to be a part of a committee so that you are also working to help us to make things better here moving forward.
Terry Philbin, DO, FAOAO