Jöry Pauwels, Flanders International College of Osteopathy (FICO), Belgium

As a teacher, principal, scientist, medicine in general and especially as student, one desires simplicity and as such look for recipes.

Osteopathy is not a recipe, procedure, standard protocol, set of tools,... It is a concept.

In research the concept of osteopathy often rarely holds it own. But it is this research that is needed to back up osteopathy in a scientifically orientated world.

Techniques should be drilled, but one also needs to stimulate free thinking to be able to select the right (optimum) technique. Osteopaths are more than just ‘click-men’.

Inside the evidence based mind, recipes lurk.

As osteopathy is a vast ‘subject/concept’ to learn, it can artificially be divided in to modules from a didactical point of view. After all modules are completed, there has to be a coordination, which integrates the modules. If not the modular way of thinking persists in the student’s brain and later in the therapist’s brain. A brand new ‘recipe-path’ is born.

It is a necessary initiative to combine educational forces in order to ‘deliver the concept(ion)’ in osteopaths.