“Far too many good therapists fall by the wayside due to injury. That must change.” – Merril Lund, inventor of Career Extenders
FORT MYERS, FL – This year’s winner of the Sotenberg Grant, Merrill Lund, received a $2,000 award for patent-related expenses incurred while developing a career-extending device for manual therapists and chiropractors.
These tools have their origins in years of “finger crunching therapy,” which constantly inspired Lund’s thought, “surely there is a way to do this more effectively, and with a lot less strain on my hands.”
“I realized if there were to be solutions, I was going to have to invent them,” said Lund. “The tools on the market that I had tried were often cumbersome, illogical and not ergonomic. I knew future tools also had to feel as much like my hands to the patient as possible—even better if my hands could be in actual contact with the patient
while I used them.”
“I have noticed that therapists are sometimes resistant to change. They have gotten used to doing their work one way,” Lund explained. “I find it’s easy for a therapist to get excited about using the tools once they actually experience first hand how good they feel and how effective they are.”
After several years of dreaming, imagining, experimenting and meditating, Lund said that the concepts and their construction began to flow.
“I would build a prototype, try it in my clinic, (often rebuilding it several times a week) constantly improving it over and over until it functioned precisely as needed,” he explained.
Lund is applying for CEU accreditation for classes that will encompass learning to use tools as well as injury prevention and self-help techniques for hurting hands/arms.
If you or your organization would like to sponsor a class, please visit www.careerextenders.com. Readers can also view testimonials and video demos of proper use online. Lund claims that these instructions—paired with the desire to work as an uninjured therapist for years to come—are all that is needed to use the device.