This week I ask: how do patients influence their own therapy regimens?
Working the same days each week means that I see a lot of the same patients, and I've started to be able to recognize them (both by name and injury). I think this is in part with how much more comfortable I am at my site. Now that I'm able to help set up with heat, ice, or electrical stimulation, I've been pranked twice by patients pretending to be shocked after I place them on the lowest electric current. The first time I was definitely surprised and nervous I had burned the patient, so I looked at him kind of like this:
Other than choosing to prank the interns and PT techs, I wondered what other decisions the patients could make regarding the therapist/surgeon designed therapy routine. Obviously, the patients are ultimately in control of the intensity, number of repetitions, etc. based on their ability and pain levels. However, I wanted to know how and if they could be more in control of their therapy outside of those factors.
One of my favorite parts of this project and my observations so far is the relationship between the techs and therapists and their patients. Many of the patients will jokingly "complain" that their therapist is going hard on them during the appointment if the number of repetitions or weight is increased. While they're not truly angry, some of the patients definitely look like they would be willing to do this to their therapists:
Luckily, I haven't seen any actual altercations between patients and therapists, mostly because the patients are clearly thankful for both the techs and therapists and the treatment they are receiving.
Something I began noticing was that several of the patients were leaving the office either with handwritten notes or printed packets describing several of their usual exercises. This way, the patients would be able to go through the parts of their exercise regimens they could do at home. I thought this was a great way for the patients to take control and have an independence with their rehabilitation.
Overall, I've been focusing a lot of my energy on the relationships and individualization of treatments more generally. However, after one of the therapists said that the knee was the "step child" of the hip, I'm excited to start focusing more on knee and hip injuries for the second half of my project!
