Have you heard of the film that has recently come out, called “The First Grader”? It’s based on the real life story of an elderly Kenyan man, Maruge, who in his youth fought with the Mau Mau during the rebellion that precipitated Kenyan independence from the United Kingdom. The Mau Mau rebellion is generally recognized as the catalyst for Kenyan independence in 1963, though much controversy still remains over the exact motivations of the various political and ethnic factions within Kenya at the time. Maruge is now 84-years old and wants to learn how to read, so that he will…

When we think of PTSD, many practitioners automatically think of soldiers, rape survivors, or childhood abuse survivors. Few of us think about other groups of people, particularly the patients in our hospitals, with a high risk of developing PTSD. According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), one of these groups would include individuals who have undergone orthopedic surgery. Daniel Aaron, MD, from Brown University’s Department of Orthopedics, was the paper’s principle author. He noted that between 20-51% of patients with musculoskeletal injuries develop PTSD, with the result being that returning…

The best teleseminar series are the ones that provide useful information in a way that grabs your attention and focuses on direct application so that listeners can immediately introduce what they’ve learned into their practices.

When Skype was founded in 2003, I’m sure that a merger with a global technological giant like Microsoft was far from their minds, or even dreams. According to Microsoft’s official press release, the driving idea behind Skype was to “break down barriers to communication” and connect people across the world for little cost.¹ And it certainly has: in its first three years, Skype was the fastest growing internet community at that time reaching 115 million customers in just three years.² Today, Skype connects over 663 million users world-wide.³ Even among my staff, almost everyone here has used Skype to connect…

I’m just looking at the business headlines today and see that the Skype/Microsoft merger is going forward. Skype’s video-conferencing services were little-known to me even five years ago, yet it was just bought out by Microsoft for more than $8 billion. For better or worse, the age of video-conferencing and electronic communication is upon us. Being a psychologist accustomed to seeing patients face-to-face, and, going to continuing education workshops face-to-face, I was reluctant to push NICABM out of this in-person format. Yet when I did, I found that our listeners were just waiting for us to join the global-communication age….

I’m not sure where to even begin. To our knowledge, this has been the biggest practitioner teleseminar series to date, not only for NICABM but also for our profession. Practitioners poured in from all over the globe to join us on these ground-breaking calls, and we’ve been overwhelmed with your response. This audience size required us to create back-up players for the calls, and plans are underway to upgrade our servers yet again. Weekly Wednesday night broadcasts ranged from 3,447 to 5,483 people per night (according to Google Analytics), coming from all 50 US states, and from the following 78…