Translating Chapters Into Words

I was so nervous last Friday for it was my first time ever to handle a real patient. What was more nerve wracking was the alteration of my original patient, hence the alteration of the case. Frankly, I wasn’t confident with the scapular retraction exercises so I really had to work hard and widen my imagination to find out things at home and improvise to use them as exercise tools. I scanned Kisner, watched videos and surfed the net to boost my confidence. And on that fateful Friday morning, I met my patient and taught home exercises for scapular retraction.

My patient was really jolly and cooperative which helped me a lot to stay at ease and remember what I had to do. He did not complain even though the exercises were challenging for him. I learned that the patient’s willingness to cooperate greatly affects the effectiveness of the treatment session and active communication between the PT and patient preserves the professional relationship.

Time management should be practiced at all times. The PT should know the amount of time to allot in each activity because the therapy should not devour all the hours in a day of a patient. As for the home program, a good 5-10 minutes should be enough. Too much chit-chat and explaining of rationale is acceptable in the classroom because it is GRADED; however, this doesn’t work in real-life PT-patient settings. Less is more. Simpler, one-word instructions are often better and easier to remember. A good Physical Therapist is able to understand chapters and chapters of concepts, translate them into a sentence, and condense them into a word. And finally, articulate them via the patient’s language.