I believe that integrity is the backbone of any practice in which you are
expecting someone to trust in you to know what's wrong with them and
correctly treat it. Does that mean you must be the most efficient? I don't
think so. I think that it means that you must do the best job that you,
individually, or as a group, can do to help the patient improve.
I don't believe that it includes, or excludes methodologies, techniques,
or modalities. If it works, ie: the patient improves on measurable functional
scales, use it. However, where I believe we, as therapists run into trouble
is in defining what are our measureable and functional gains for a certain
patient. We must try to find more suitable goals than "decrease pain by 25%"
or "decrease muscle tension by 30%". These are too subjective and inadequate
for anyone to obtain information relevant to the improvement of the patient's
functional ability or performance in life. (I assume that is our goal?)
Therefore, I would recommend that we stop using such ambiguous terms to
define our parameters of measurement and get down to straight facts. What do
we intend to improve in this patient's functional ability or his/her quality
of life and how do we intend to measure it? That, i believe is the current
dilema (SP?) of PT practice.
Sherri Seidel, PT
Texas
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