#GetPT1st

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Gaining access to a skilled physical therapist is extremely important and is one of the major issues we face as a profession and health care system.  We are after Self-Referral… or Direct Access. Meaning, if a member of the community thinks they need services from a physical therapist, they should be able to directly access that service, and that therapist.

Here’s the problem: WE know who could benefit from our diagnosis, prognosis, interventions and thought processes… but the public often does not. If they don’t know what we do (other than “pain and torture” or “massage”) then why would they seek us out?

A review of the ankle and foot (Part 1): Anatomy

In prep for my first week as a full-time employed physical therapist I started reviewing the ankle and foot… thank you Dutton for the all-encompassing reference. It might sound odd why I would chose the ankle out of all body parts to start. It’s simple; referral source driven, like most things. So me being the young, diligent, type A person I am what else would I do but read Chapter 21 “The Ankle and Foot” by Mark Dutton so that I may try and perform at an above satisfactory level come Monday. In the midst of my efforts I decided to turn it into an opportunity for me to construct and share a review of this difficult yet amazing anatomical structure that humbly allows us to walk all over it. (pun intended)

Part 1: Anatomy (this post)

Part 2: Biomechanics and Pathology (next…)

Let me start with some of the statistics about the ankle and foot to demonstrate its

PT: Prosperity in Diversity

I was recently at a company-wide meeting with all the PTs and as I looked around I got thinking…

An entire room of people who think differently, have different algorithms and thought processes, and are all going to be treating people who are seeking one thing: Physical Therapy.

It was a very crazy thought. How can this ALL be Physical Therapy? Certified Manual Trigger Point Therapists, Certified Mechanical Diagnostic Therapists, Certified Othopedic Manual Therapists. At first it is a bothersome idea, as in, they can’t all represent PT, or the PT that I envision. But perhaps that is short sighted. Isn’t that one of our greatest assets? Isn’t that a selling point right there? We are extremely varied in our approach… there is a therapist for every patient. There’s a PT for every pt. 

We, in PT, are evidenced-based and research driven. We look for the

Insurance: Why do we put up with it?

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Insurance: What an interesting concept

First off: Insurance is not a good deal. You pay money each month (bad deal), then you must trade your health to get the “benefits” (bad deal). To see any money back, to get “your money’s worth,” you need to use the system, and using the system means you are not independently healthy… so it’s a lose-lose.

Same goes for Life Insurance. Gotta die to get the moneyzz. Bad Deal.  But I do it anyway… you too.

No one is !happy! with their insurance, right?  Well, that might not be true; it all depends on your comfortability with risk. Some benefits may exceed your expectations even! It’s mostly in what you

Lost in Translation

In reading Spencer’s recent posts (particularly Part 2, but also Part 1) I am struck by an interesting theme.  The information was there. It was just somehow interpreted wrong and dispersed wrong, or received wrong… like a game of telephone.

Spencer mentions that the IASP definition of pain “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” is clearly presented in education. Since it is there all along… how does it get lost in translation? Can we blame the

The Crossroads of Philosophy and Physiology (Part 2): Where We Missed the Mark on Pain Education.

 

And you’d be surprised… the answer goes further back than you might think.

So if you read Part 1, we left with a series of questions — all boiling around the conundrum of what I will call “the pain education lag.” This can be defined as the time it takes for the education to take an effect (i.e. reduction of aberrant pain). Essentially, you provide a treatment, but it’s possible for no effect to be seen immediately (and its also highly likely for this to occur in such a delayed fashion). And this is something that is significant. Other treatment effects take place immediately. Yet, with pain education

The Crossroads of Philosophy and Physiology (Part 1): The Pain Education Revelation

 

Remember when you first began practice? Patients came to you for help. You were the solution to their pain..or were you?? Admittedly, you might have been a little scared…not entirely sure of how to deal with your first complex patient of the day. He had chronic LBP for the past 8 years…heck maybe for the past