Struggling with ‘insidious onset’ pain patients?
When patients complain of ‘tightness’, ‘stiffness’ and ‘pains and aches’ without a specific mechanism of injury it can be challenging. In part because the complaints can often feel vague.
Patient Care
This really threw me for a loop. My patient felt worse after my treatment and I felt awful.
It sucks when you get thrown for a loop with a patient. They can throw off your day and it can feel hard to bounce back from these encounters. It can be especially unsettling when flare-up symptoms are more dramatic than expected.
A Fresh Look at Myotome Testing: A Key to Unlocking Better Shoulder Results
Myotome testing is often seen as a necessary, but not always insightful element, of a shoulder assessment. It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing myotome testing as optional for the shoulder patient — especially if there doesn’t seem to be any suspected radicular or peripheral neuropathic indications from the patient history. Do you …
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An often overlooked cause of shoulder pain
Treating painful shoulders can be tricky and there is an often overlooked cause of shoulder pain. When we’re dealing with a painful shoulder and we see a loss of overhead movement, it’s easy to focus our attention on the glenohumeral joint. We may jump to mobilizing the shoulder joint to improve joint biomechanics. The scapula …
Get unstuck treating hard patients: 4 pitfalls & 3 treatment buckets for results
I don’t know about you, but I find that it’s almost automatic to put patients into categories. We have our easy patients and we have our hard patients. Someone who is young, motivated, body aware and has healthy beliefs about movement and pain can easily fall into the easy category. But what constitutes a hard …
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The 2 Mistakes To Avoid With Exercise Prescription (& the Surprising Solution)
Therapeutic exercise. It’s a staple of a physiotherapist’s toolbox. No other intervention has as much research supporting it. As movement clinicians, we know this. That’s why we’re always keen to learn a new exercise or identify a fresh twist on the tried and true exercises. Prescribing the right exercise is important, but there are two …
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Using Metaphors & Analogies to Improve Patient Education in Physiotherapy
If there’s one thing that is the bedrock in our care of patients as physiotherapists it is patient education. We educate our patients about a lot of things. Here’s just a short list: patient’s condition our assessment findings treatment plan anatomy and physiology specific treatments and their rationale referral to another healthcare provider diagnostic report …
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Exercise Software Review Part 1: Physiotec
Exercise Software Review Part 1: Physiotec Exercise software is one of the most popular pieces of software that physiotherapists use on a daily basis in practice and yet there are no reviews of exercise software for physiotherapists that I’ve come across. With such an important piece of software it’s important to make a choice that …
3 Easy Steps to Help Patients De-Stress During Treatment
Whether stress comes from the limitations of a clients injury or other psychosocial factors, what specific tools do you provide your patients to help them better cope with stress in their lives? Have you ever wondered if there was something more that could be done with patients as they’re laying at the beginning or end …
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Finding Freud in Physiotherapy-Part 3
Reconsidering Boundaries Moves Us Forward (Read Part 1 & Part 2 here) Are physiotherapists doing psychotherapy? Applying Frank and Frank’s descriptions, I say yes, physiotherapy treatment can be psychotherapeutic. In my view, psychotherapy is not solely contingent upon the treatment of psychological diagnoses; rather, it is a form of therapy that addresses the psychological factors of a person’s experience. Of …