3 Skills To Develop That Takes You From A Good To Great Physiotherapist.
Wishing a Very Happy World Physiotherapy Day to all physiotherapists.
As we enter another year of acknowledging our profession and displaying pride over it, we also remember certain remarks made by fellow professionals questioning the worth of our profession or undervaluing our profession. And to be honest, even we ourselves at some point have questioned our professional existence too.
Also the never ending debate about using “Dr.” as prefix is also a nail in the grave.
Though no matter how loud the critic gets, our inner voice always speaks to us and makes us realise the worth of our profession.
A recent debate in the scottish parliament quoted a minister saying “Physiotherapy is worth its weight in gold.”
Awesome, right? Though we don’t need a scottish minister to make us realise our worth, our experiences and results speak for itself.
We are and will always be an irreplaceable part of the healthcare system. We may not be professionals who save lives but what we do is surely nothing short of saving lives. We as physiotherapists make the weight of the overburdened healthcare system a little easier to lift. My heartiest congratulations to all my fellow physiotherapists, lets pledge to transform the healthcare system one patient at a time.
And on this auspicious days, lets pledge to be better physiotherapists, to reach a level of excellence which hasn’t been reached before.
Becoming a good physiotherapist needs sound knowledge and technical skills but to become a great physiotherapist, besides honing our technical skills, we need to develop certain soft skills or qualities.
Here are 3 qualities to become an exceptional physiotherapist-
- Attention to details– Patients are decoding the diagnosis to you through their list of complaints, aggravating factors and relieving factors. Our assessment also points out the culprits for the underlying pain. In short we are Byomkesh Bakshi of the physiotherapy profession. The more attention you pay and the more you develop your observation skills, the better and faster we can treat our patients.
- Endless curiosity– Be extremely curious. Certain questions like why do we give static quads (MMT grade 1 ) to a knee case with quadriceps strength of MMT grade 4? How is the patient walking if they have weak gluteus maximus? How does medial tibiofemoral knee pain occur in both genu varum as well as genus valgum patients which are completely opposite in nature? How can we make patients pain-free, even in cases of severe degeneration/osteoarthritis. My quest to answer these questions made me a good physiotherapist each day. Your questions of curiosity might be different, but nonetheless valuable. Chase the answers to your questions like tom chases jerry and viola! U will not realise when you turned from ordinary to exceptional .
- Patience– we spend on an average 45-50 mins per session. We have unique opportunity to know the patient, their likes , dislikes , pains and fears. Pain is not just a biological phenomenon. It is a complex interaction of the biopsychosocial factors. We have an incredible opportunity to decode these factors for our patients and create unique solutions to resolve their issues. So have patience with patients and build a rapport with them . Hand hold them in their journey from pain to relief.
Lets become the best version of ourselves.
Wishing you all a very happy world physiotherapy day