What I did not learn in PT school
It has been more than 20 years since I graduated from Physiotherapy school and even though I have learned all the skills and technical things I need to practice, I found out that majority of learning happened along the way.
Words Matter- The most effective thing we can offer to our patients is reassurance and support. We, as a PT, are in the perfect position to reassure our patients, encourage them and empower them. We have the incredible opportunity to help them re-write their story in a way that benefits them. Through our dialogue, we can help them shift their perspective, feel more confident and become more resilient.
Uncertainty- We, PT’s usually do not have all the answers to your questions. We will always try our best but the best we can do is to guide you to where you want to be.
Physiotherapy is a customer service profession. It is our job to help take people where they want to be, not where we think that they should be. If a patient wants to be able to do something, it is our job to help them get there, not to tell them that they can’t. If they want to run marathon again, we try to help them with that goal in a realistic way.
Know your patients- If we want to be an effective Physiotherapist, we need to build a relationship with our patients that is set on a foundation of genuine interest, compassionate caring and empathetic love. In the most basic terms, we need to get to know our patients and actually care about them so that they feel comfortable and compelled to invest their time, energy and effort [not to mention money] into letting us help them.
We cannot help everybody- I might not be the right Physiotherapist for everyone and as much as I do not want to accept it, despite my best efforts, I won’t be able to help everybody I treat. There are some people who, for one reason or another, might need something else, whether that be a surgical procedure or another kind of therapeutic discipline (e.g. mental health). However, even if I can’t help someone in the “healthcare” sense, I can, without a doubt, leave them better off for having met me. In everything that I do, strive to make people better, even if that just bringing a smile to their face or giving them a few minutes of undivided attention.
After 20 years of practice I realized that the best knowledge I acquired are not from school but from each and every patients I met. I am hoping that as I practice more I will learn more things that we cannot find in any physiotherapy books