On my last placement, when treating musculoskeletal patients, I had to report back to the supervising physiotherapists after the subjective and objective. There was 4 different physiotherapists that I talked to and they all had very different approaches to treating injuries in the acute stage. One of the physiotherapists would like to be more cautious, using ultrasound and gentle ROM. The other physiotherapist advises to work through the pain, to just mobilise the patient and gain full ROM within the first few sessions. I found this confusing because they were 2 different aproaches but both physiotherapists were quite adamant that their intervention was most effective and the other one was wrong. I did not want to argue because being a student I did not want to cause a fuss but it did frustrate me. Maybe if I had more confidence to give my opinion this would not have happened, but on prac, I tend to just agree with what the supervising physiotherapist advises because most of the time they know best!
The dilemma in this experience is to know where your boundaries as a student is. Physiotherapists have different approaches to situations and they all work well but as a student, how do we know which approach to take? When I did present my subjective and objective to the physiotherapist, they would ask me my thoughts for intervention and I had to change my answer depending on what I knew they wanted to hear. I am not sure if this is the best way to handle this but I try stay away from confrontation especially with the supervisors who decide whether I pass or fail!! Next time, I will try and be more assertive, giving my rationale for my intervention and be more confidant.
If anyone has any advice on how to handle this situation please let me know.
Jeanne I agree that sometimes you do have to give the supervisor the answer that they are looking for... even if that means swapping your rationale depending on which supervisor you are reporting back to.
ReplyDeleteI think, however, that it can be a really great situation to be in. We are limited at uni as to how many different physios we can see in action. It is interesting to get as many points of view as possible so that we can collate ideas etc.. to make our own clinical decisions in the future based on more information than just what we learned in labs/lectures etc...
yes i agree with madeleine. its great to have different opinions on things. i guess the thing to take from this is that in many cases there is no recipe and there are many ways to treat a particular pattient effectively. good post!
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