September 2005 • Vol. 1, No. 3
	Advancing Orthotic and Prosthetic Care Through Knowledge

Book Review

Prosthetics and Orthotics, 2nd Edition

Authors: Donald G. Shurr, CPO, PT, and John W. Michael, CPO

I feel particularly honored to be able to review this book written by Mssrs. Shurr and Michael. Each of these practitioners has a keen ability to instruct, educate, and present information.

When the general, or in this case the medical, public takes stock of any medical profession and looks for proof that the profession has proven its relevance, the written words of its educators are scrutinized. At present our field and many others are crashing headlong into outcome measures that are meaningful. A respected auto executive told his fledgling junior execs, “Without numbers, it is just an opinion.” While this book is about instructing others, most of the book’s information has not been exclusively proven by equations or studies. Will the medical public embrace such a textbook? Can it be put forth as a source for the medical community? A thorough reading says yes. Medicine is both art and science.

For a practitioner who would use this book as intended, the reason jumps off the page from the oft-overlooked section of the book, the Foreword. Dr. Reginald R. Cooper ponders why patients are being relegated to a life of disability due to a lack of widespread education on contemporary O&P techniques. He states, “This deplorable state of affairs results from two major problems in the education of health professionals: the lack of emphasis on the subject in curricular design and the heretofore absence of a thoughtfully prepared text designed to provide a coordinated overview for the serious student who needs an understandable distillate of an evolving, fragmented, and complex discipline.”

You may think you are not an educator, but think again. Each time you engage in discussions at a clinic, present an inservice, or meet with a therapist to review the patient’s progress, you are educating. Wouldn’t we benefit ourselves if we made a sincere effort at presenting a “textbook” of basic O&P principles? It was the authors’ primary objective of this volume “to provide sound overview of the principles underlying the art and science of prosthetics and orthotics.” As a former instructor of O&P to a university physical therapy curriculum, I feel it would have been much easier to use this book as the benchmark of what should be covered and how.

What makes the book most relevant for the masses of us O&P professionals is that you can provide this text to the various departments and individuals that also provide treatment to your patients. First by reading it and becoming familiar with the many chapters (12), with each broken out into 6–12 subchapters, you can refer to the book when “educating” our colleagues: the nurses, therapists, and physicians. Many of our colleagues would welcome such a book so they could be familiar with the principles and language we take for granted.

How can that be complete? It is not and was not meant to be an encyclopedia of all O&P treatments, rationales, devices, materials, etc. The book covers a wide swath of expected topics, plus biomechanics, methods, materials, fabrication and a special chapter dealing just with pediatrics. The intended audience will find it helpful as they can extract a significant amount of information from its pages in a short amount of time. It is well written, organized, and presented in a clear fashion. It will be well worth your time and energy to purchase and use it for assisting your day-to-day practice of O&P with other health professionals.