Achieving More Through AmpuTeam
By Brad Shebib

There is a popular acronym that has been used as a motivational tool for decades - T.E.A.M. - Together Everyone Achieves More. It's designed to indicate how important it is that everyone on the same team work toward a common goal for better results. Never has that been more apparent than right here in our own backyard. With the inception of AmpuTEAM at Wright & Filippis, we truly are seeing how teamwork can positively affect the lives of everyone involved, most importantly for the amputees to which the program is directed.

AmpuTEAM is the brainchild of Ken Woodward, CPO. His vision for a greater prosthetic department and consequently better patient function has lead to fantastic changes in a short amount of time. Ken felt, as did all members of Wright & Filippis' prosthetic department, that we weren't giving our patients enough attention in order to allow them to achieve their functional goals. Through inadequacies in our health care reimbursement system, patients simply have not been allowed to receive enough time and rehabilitation for maximal prosthetic use. Furthermore, it was evident that there was an extreme lack of education in the rehabilitation community on how to train amputees properly in the short time they are given. Finally, it was apparent that we weren't reaching out to physicians with new and fresh ideas about how we as a company were going to better the lives of our patients.

Thus, AmpuTEAM was born. It is a collaborative effort between prosthetists, therapists, physicians, patients, and family members in an attempt to maximize patient function with their prosthesis. We believe all members of the team need to be intimately involved in the patient's recovery because, as we know, an amputation will change a person's life forever. Without full cooperation from everyone, the patient cannot achieve their desired goals. That is why AmpuTEAM is working hard to educate the rehabilitation community on our programs and ways to extend and maximize the rehabilitation of the patient. We are educating physicians on how our programs are better suited to the long-term success of the patient. Lastly, we are offering programs that no other prosthetic provider is offering, which give the amputee an opportunity to work closely with other amputees in an attempt to improve their daily function.