As a way of introduction, my name is Martin Khoury. I am a South African born and bred and subsequently qualified Chiropractor. I would like to present myself to the practice so that patients can start putting a name to the face and begin to know a little about my background.
I qualified as a Chiropractor (Master’s Degree in Technology: Chiropractic) in 2000 from the Technikon Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, now known as the University of Johannesburg. This Master’s degree in Chiropractic carries the European Chiropractor’s College of Education (ECCE) international accreditation. I became a permanent staff member in the Department of Chiropractic at the institution while awaiting my final mark for my master’s dissertation. I remained with the Department for 6 years, originally in a full-time and then after 2 years as a part-time employee. I undertook responsibilities of lecturing a 3rd and 4th year level subjects, took practical technique classes, undertook responsibilities for Clinic duty and had a clinical research supervision role too that resulted in over 20 master’s level dissertations being supervised by myself.
In parallel with this, I ran my own neuromusculoskeletal manual therapy practice in Johannesburg. I subsequently left the academic environment to pursue full-time practice as it had grown to a point where I had to spend more time therein to maintain and foster its growth. My wife, Teresa, also joined me in practice as she is also a Chiropractor.
We relocated our family to Ballito in February 2006, on the east coast of South Africa after working in Johannesburg for 7 years. At this point I joined the Kings Park Sports Medicine Centre in Durban at the Kings Park Rugby Stadium, home of the Sharks Rugby Team. There I worked as the first resident Chiropractor in an old established multidisciplinary sports medicine practice. I was the team doctor for the Rovers U21 rugby team, a feeder club for the Sharks U21 rugby for 2 years from 2007 to 2008. I was exposed to high level sports athletes in all disciplines from school level to elite Olympic level in a variety of sporting codes. I learnt at this practice how to become a team player in a multidisciplinary professional environment, bringing Chiropractic manual therapy expertise, and even more-so, diagnostic expertise in high level functional biomechanics and injury diagnosis.
I left Kings Park in 2010 to pursue full-time practice in my own multidisciplinary manual therapy practice in Ballito that I started in October 2008. Since then, our practice has consisted primarily of Chiropractic and Physiotherapy professional offerings with off-site Rehabilitation through Pilates and Functional Rehab/Exercise Trainers.
In February 2012, I attended the first Pain Course run by the Pain Management Physiotherapist Group (PMPG), the first in a series of 6 modules to be completed over 3 years towards the Certificate in Pain Management. I subsequently never completed the last module (a reading module) as I registered and completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Interdisciplinary Pain Management at the University of Cape Town in 2018 instead, for which the Certificate is a feeder course. I now have the PGDip (Inter. Pain) UCT qualification and am registered on the Train Pain Academy website as such, which is an academic resource for health professionals in South Africa who have an interest in participating in academic work in the field of Pain Management, and a resource for the general public looking for practitioners who are academically trained for the management of complex pain cases.
My exposure to chronic and neuropathic pain and the biopsychosocial aspect of a patient centred management protocol has massively influenced the type of patients I now consult with and how I manage them. I still see occasional sports medicine patients but the majority of what I now consult for is in the chronic pain domain. I have developed a special interest within the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and chronic pain.
My Chiropractic expertise provided me with the ability to comfortably manage patients chiropractically, using diversified technic, for spinal and extremity work for which I am highly competent. I have high levels of expertise in myofascial trigger point therapy including dry needling. I have high expertise in functional rehabilitation and exercise prescription. My exposure to the practice of Physiotherapy and Sports Medicine, Orthopaedic surgery and Neurology has given me a firm basis on which to advise and manage, using my range of skill that I have learnt over the last 20 years, immediate and medium and long-term post-op orthopaedic and spinal surgical cases. Please note that although I have acquired this high level of expertise, I do not practice high volume patient numbers as is the norm in some chiropractic practices. Instead, I prefer to manage difficult cases, using a biopsychosocial methodology and a multifaceted treatment approach, focusing rather on the patients who presents with neuropathy and chronic pain.
I have undertaken to present at podium level at various symposia, conferences and international conferences over the years. I have practiced evidence based manual therapy for the last 20 years, the last 13 of them being in a multidisciplinary practice of my own making, now directed into the chronic pain domain and with a new set of skills and tools to manage these types of patients. I hold board certification to practice in Australia and New Zealand, having written the Council for Chiropractic Education Australasia (CCEA) board exams in Sydney in February 2018.
I realized after my first 5 years in private practice when I worked alone that one’s professional and character growth is limited without the stimulation and more importantly, the professional accountability, that an interdisciplinary practice requires and provides. My best years of practice have been the last 10 years, likely because of the knowledge and experience I have gained to become more effective and competent in a difficult segment of patient base, but because of the learning I received from being involved with other disciplines, especially those medically aligned. I also realize that no one profession knows or has all the answers…I aspire to know what I don’t know and to seek further knowledge continuously.
In conclusion, I look forward to making myself available to you, the patient, to help you make better sense of why you are struggling with pain, and then to assist in formulating a plan to get you to cope better and hopefully, ultimately, be pain-free.
Comments