The Educating PT

DAY ONE

Physical therapy was presented in such a way that is different from what I usually see it. We were taught to be teachers. We were taught how to deal with different kinds of patients through the role playing activity and the importance of teaching these patients. It was followed by writing a critique of our videos from our Therapeutic Exercises class wherein we taught patients to do certain therapeutic exercises. The last activity was the Yoga activity or the teaching psychomotor activity.

The activities are all very important to our practice because patient education is what we really should impart to our patients. One of the reasons of non-compliance to therapy is insufficient knowledge about the condition. Due to this, if a patient is more aware about his or her condition and the techniques, interventions, and modalities that would help him or her, the patient would most likely adhere to these treatments. This is also very crucial because patients may be very attentive and cooperative during the treatment but still do nothing at home. So it is important to inculcate to the patients the importance of home management. Engaging the caregiver of the patient can be a tool to overcome this problem.

Moreover, writing a critique of our own videos made us more mindful of our ways of teaching. It is good to know that we have improved because we were able to identify and correct our flaws in the video. We were then so sure that we were doing the right thing but while writing the critique, we thought of a lot of things to improve the performance.

Furthermore, the last activity was the Yoga activity. It was a fun experience because it taught us another aspect of therapy that is both therapeutic and relaxing and fun for both the patient and therapist. Also, we were told about teaching Yoga to children with disabilities and how to make it enjoyable for them.

After the whole day experience, one thing that I must say that I learned was to exude confidence in everything that you do. If you are a therapist, be confident and sound confident whenever you are teaching your patient because it is one way of earning the trust of your patient. But do not forget that everything that you will teach them should be factual and you have evidences to prove it. And always establish rapport with the patient so that teaching them would be much easier and smoother.