Training > Seminar: AMA Guides 6th Edition

AMA Guides: Sixth Edition – One Day Intensive Seminar

We are pleased to provide our highly successful one day seminars for you. Please contact Mindy Brigham if you would like to arrange a seminar in your area. We also encourage you to attend our web-based training events.

This unique one-day seminar provides a solid orientation to the new Sixth Edition of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment. If you are involved in performing or reviewing impairment assessments – it is essential that you attend this seminar – you need to learn the new Guides.  Participants will demonstrate the fundamental skills required to assess most common impairments, based on new approaches.

• The course is presented by the Senior Contributing Editor, Editor of the Guides Newsletter and Guides Casebook, and internationally recognized expert on impairment evaluation, Christopher R. Brigham, MD, FACOEM, FAADEP, CEDIR, CIME, CIR. Dr. Brigham was an author of the Upper Extremities, Lower Extremities and Spine Chapters.

• The program is designed for a multi-disciplinary audience – physicians, attorneys, claims professionals, fact-finders (judges, hearing officers), and others involved in workers’ compensation, personal injury, and motor vehicle casualty cases. 

• You will learn the new approach based on the terminology and analytical framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The Sixth Edition reflects the most significant evolution in impairment assessment. A diagnosis-based grid has been developed for each organ system with five classes of impairment severity, based on consensus-based dominant criterion.

• At the conclusion of this seminar you will be able to explain how standardized methodology is applied to each chapter to enhance the relevancy of impairment ratings, improve internal consistency and promote ease of application to the rating process. You will be able to describe how functionally based histories, physical findings and broadly accepted objective clinical test results are integrated to determine the grade and specific impairment within the impairment class.

"I highly recommend Dr. Brigham's Guide's training seminars for anyone involved in AMA Guide's impairment ratings. He has put on so many of these over the years he knows how to present what is needed smoothly and effectively in an easy to assimulate one day package. I have been to quite a few of these myself from my first introduction to the Guides 4th edition to his timely training sessions when the 5th edition came out and now the 6th. I left each of these ready to provide accurate ratings. His input in the writing of the new methods in the 6th edition musculoskeletal chapters takes us to a new paradigm that reflects his years in this field."

"Thank you so much for facilitating an excellent program. I was "empowered" to go through a backlog of 4 IR ratings w/6th Ed; which I was intimidated by prior to the conference. Thank you again for such concise data"

"I loved the seminars and the expertise of the lecturers made the difference between reading the book and getting knowledge."

Learning Objectives

As a result of this learning opportunity, you will be able to:

• Discuss the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and its role in impairment evaluation.

• Explain the reasons for revision of our prior approaches to impairment assessment.

• Describe how to determine Diagnosis-Based Impairments, and make adjustments on the basis of the results of Functional History, Physical Examination, and Clinical Studies.

• Demonstrate the ability to score Functional Inventories (including the QuickDASH, Lower Limb Outcome Scale, and Pain Disability Questionnaire).

• Explain why methods used in previous editions (such as spinal range of motion assessment and strength determination) are no longer determinates.

• Demonstrate the ability to rate most commonly rated disorders, including spinal pain, upper limb disorders (hand, wrist, elbow, shoulders and entrapments), lower limb disorders (foot / ankle, knee and foot), nervous system disorders, and pain.

• Discuss challenges and opportunities associated with this evolution in impairment assessment.

Learning Approaches and Resources

Dr. Brigham will integrate into the learning experience visual demonstrations, case examples, and involve the participants in case solutions.  You will receive a syllabus (summarizing the content) and links to the PowerPoint graphics and resources designed specifically for the attendees.

Continuing Medical Education

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and Policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the Joint Sponsorship of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and Brigham & Associates, Inc.  The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine designates this educational activity for a maximum of 7.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™.  Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Seminar Schedule

Seminar Director

Christopher R. Brigham, MD is the Founder and President of Brigham and Associates, Inc.  He is the Senior Contributing Editor for the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Sixth Edition, and was a contributor / author for several chapters, including Upper Extremities, Lower Extremities and Spine. With the Fifth Edition he served on the Advisory Committee and as a contributor. Dr. Brigham is Board-Certified in Occupational Medicine (ABPM), Founding Director of the American Board of Independent Medical Examiners (ABIME), a Certified Independent Medical Examiner (CIME), a Certified Impairment Rater (CIR), a Fellow of the American Academy of Disability Evaluating Physicians (FAADEP) with Certification in Evaluation of Disability and Impairment Rating (CEDIR), and a Fellow of the American College of Occupational Environmental Medicine (FACOEM), and a graduate of the Washington University School of Medicine – St. Louis. 

Dr. Brigham is the Editor of the AMA publications Guides Newsletter and the Guides Casebook. He is co-author of the text Understanding the AMA Guides in Workers Compensation, has written over one hundred published articles on impairment and disability evaluation and other texts, chaired the Medical Advisory Board for the Medical Disability Advisor, Fourth Edition, is featured in several video, audio and web-based productions in the medicolegal field, and has trained thousands of physicians, attorneys, claims professionals and fact-finders, throughout the US, Canada and internationally. He is an experienced professional speaker. As a clinician with over twenty five years experience, he has performed several thousand independent medical and impairment evaluations, providing him with excellent insight to the complexities of human potential, impairment and disability. As a result of this experience he has consulted for numerous organizations (including governmental jurisdictions). His curriculum vitae is available at http://www.impairment.com/PDFFiles/BrighamC_CV.pdf

Note: Dr. Brigham and Brigham and Associates, Inc. are independent of the American Medical Association (AMA). Each user should have access to the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Sixth Edition. The training program and resources provided are neither endorsed nor sponsored by the AMA and the opinions and content of the training presentations and learning content represent the views of the presenters and are not necessarily the views of the AMA, particularly on matters of medical policy.