artifact 7: CME training & certification

Cuevas MEDEK exercises (CME) is a unique psychomotor approach for infants and young children with abnormal motor development as a result of known or unknown non-degenerative conditions impacting the central nervous system (Cuevas, 2012). Prior to joining my current practice, I had never been exposed to CME. As I observed my colleagues implement CME approaches into their care plans, I was in awe of how the children responded.

One of the major critiques to CME of which I was immediately made aware, is there is no research to support its' efficacy. Until this point in my career, everything in my education had placed a heavy emphasis on evidence based practice. In April 2019, I traveled to Toronto, Canada to pursue Level I training and certification. For several months, I approached CME with equal parts excitement and reluctance. Though it lacked any singular piece of formal evidence, the anecdotal experiences spoke for itself. There was simply something about watching children move and react, in ways they never have before, sometimes in a matter of mere minutes, that made CME so mesmerizing. After completion of my evidence based practice course in Fall 2019, I gained a renewed understanding of what evidence based practice truly means. I have come to appreciate best practice is not exclusive to evidence based practice. Since then, I have readily integrated CME into my practice and consider it to be an alternative and complementary approach to conventional methods.