Meet Our Students
Hear What CAO Students and Graduates Have to Say!
We believe the best reflection of our institution is how our students feel about their learning experience with us. Here you will find what past and current students have to say about our unique osteopathy education program, clinical activities, campus life, and faculty!
Don’t forget to visit our YouTube channel, where you’ll find video testimonials from our students and faculty, as well as more information about our annual events, our not-for-profit student clinic, and much more!
I did a five-year undergrad at Western University in kinesiology. I loved the idea of the manual therapies, healing, helping people, that whole aspect. I had a friend of mine who introduced me to the osteopathic world and kind of told me to search it up. So obviously I searched up this one and the one in Toronto. I went on both websites and this one kind of jumped off the page. The student portal’s good, there’s videos, there’s Powerpoints. It’s got all your lecture slides, you know, from your anatomy and physiology, history, all your courses, so you can study in advance before the next mod. And you can obviously go back and study previous mods. It’s a good tool to have, definitely help your knowledge base. They set you up to succeed. The CAO to me is challenging but extremely rewarding.
I had a really bad injury while I was working. I’ve been everywhere, seen everyone, done everything. But a year and a half in, I finally found an osteopath who was a graduate of this school, and he was the only one who was able to help me, and, again, with the kin background, I’d always been interested but didn’t really think it was gonna take me anywhere, and as soon as I was treated and got better, I decided to come have a look at the school.
Before I went to school here, I did kinesiology for my undergraduate. And then, for post-grad, I did athletic therapy at Zurich University. All of those seemed very, there was a sort of segmental approach to each methodology of thinking, and, from that, when I came to this school, I started to see how you can look from the bigger picture to a smaller picture and go out to the bigger picture and treat it in a whole different way. It’s almost like engineering of the human body. Looking at the biomechanics of how things actually move in a functional way.
I actually started at McMaster with my kinesiology degree, spent some time working with some physios. I just really wasn’t liking some of the answers I was getting, so I spent some time with an osteopath, and I really just appreciated the thought process and the principle-based understanding of osteopathy, and I, for the first time, started to see patients getting better, and to me, that spoke volumes.
When it comes down to it what’s most important to me is science, and I love that. I didn’t even know that I was interested in osteopathy, to begin with, because I graduated from medical school. All throughout medical school I wasn’t really connecting with it. In medical school, because you have to memorize everything, things don’t sink in. If you’re memorizing things you’re not able to make connections. I like the idea of going deeper and getting to the root of the problem and osteopathy is all about understanding the connections in order to be able to treat a patient. It’s very challenging at times but they’re only doing it because they want you to push the limits of what you’re able to do.
My name is Grace Thompson, I’m in the fourth year. I’ve been a registered nurse for many years. I had a way of seeing the world, seeing what illness was. I think it’s the way that health care is going, that we need to treat proactively, rather than retroactively. The CAO Experience has changed the way that I see wellness.
I graduated from the Canadian Academy of Osteopathy in 2013. I wanted to become an osteopathic manual practitioner because I had some really good experience with other osteopathic manual therapists already working in the field. Everything could be explained rationally, it made a lot of sense. I saw the good that they could do essentially, right away. To anyone interested in coming into the CAO, you should know that because of the excellent training you get, you’re gonna have great results. Of course, this training is very difficult. You’re trained very intensely, very rigorously, but the results are really undeniable. It’s everything you wanted and sometimes a lot more than you ever expected. It’s important to understand that it’s a lot of hard work, but at the same time, it’s completely worth it.
After graduating from The University of Toronto with a degree in Kinesiology, Amanda looked for a challenging post-graduate program which would help her identify the true cause of physiologic problems and how to apply appropriate treatment. She found it at The Canadian Academy of Osteopathy.
“The Canadian Academy of Osteopathy is a great place to learn. You’ll be instantly hooked by the engaging classes, team environment and Rob’s charismatic leadership in the classroom.”
Student clinic is great because it gives you that real life hands-on experience. To get an idea of what it’s like to actually treat a patient in real life and real time with real problems. You don’t get that anywhere else. I went through four years of kinesiology education without ever putting my hands on one body. It’s great to actually be able to treat the people in the Hamilton community. It gives us the chance to test out our abilities. To see who’s safe, who’s not. Discuss red flags. But also gives us the chance to really see people who are sick. Who needs treatment. And to see what that’s like and to get our hands on it. Even when coming from a kin background it’s a really big eye-opener. It’s the best osteopathic school that you are going to find in North America.
After finishing my undergrad in kinesiology, I wanted to pursue something further. When I went to visit today and saw Mr. Johnson speak about how they approach the bodies and the philosophy, and the anatomy and physiology and mechanics of the school, ’cause it’s nothing like I’ve experienced before and I was sold. So, CAO has been preparing me to go out into clinical practice in numerous different ways that I wasn’t expecting. Since you’re not learning technique-based treatments, when you come across a patient that walks in your office, it can be overwhelming, but with the way they teach, you’re never left thinking, “Oh, where do I begin?” because you know there’s an individual process with every patient. I think that’s the most rewarding thing of the CAO, is that they teach you to think for yourself.