What Has Physical Therapy Become?

[gary s]

True story. As some of you know, I work in homecare. I currently have a patient in his mid fifties. Years ago he "blew out" his left knee. Two yrs ago he had a TKA. Sometime after, he was in a horrific auto accident, severely injuring his back and losing his right leg below the knee. Ironically, he's a prosthetist. A week ago he under went a lumbar fusion He's currently ambulatory but in a lot of pain. I'll have a few visits with him, and then the surgeon plans to send him outpt, for what sounds like palliative treatment--HP's, massage--yadda, yadda. So he goes to check out one facility. There he is standing with his prosthesis, wincing in pain, and the owner laughs and tells him that he's going to have him on the mat and make him scream. My patient told him--"No you won't, because I'm not coming here." This is what's out there!

[nari]

After reading posts on RE and a lot of other sources, why doesn't this surprise me????

Like a patient I knew last year who had chronic LBP and peripheral pain for about 8 years; while she came to me in the Pain Clinic, she was attending a rehab RTW facility. She was forced to push a supermarket trolley, with graduating loading, up and down the floor of the "Tx" room - to gain endurance and strength. She tried to tell them she leaves the trolley at the end of each aisle (at quiet times) and walks back and forth with a few goods. She was told she was avoiding doing things the proper way.

The theme of this thread is a favourite of mine, Gary...so I won't bore folk with my 'radical' ideas of what PT has become. :)

Nari

[Barrett Dorko]

Gary,

A timely topic; heartbreaking, of course, but timely.

I heard some of this on NPR’s On the Media ( http://www.onthemedia.org/) this weekend.

According to the new Oxford English Dictionary the prefix “Mc” indicates “an inexpensive, easy but usually low quality and commercialized version of something.” Thus, a “McJob,” denoting an entry level position for someone still in high school. The McDonalds corporation is seeking a way of getting the entry stricken from the dictionary. This is going to be rather difficult; it seems to me, because it’s the culture that leads the dictionary, not the other way around. For obvious reasons, the culture has decided that the eponym “Mc” (a word or name derived from the name of a person) is derogatory.

Your patient has described the attitude toward the profession developed by many of our colleagues performing McTherapy at a McJob. This doesn’t include any therapists reading this, of course, but I suspect everybody knows another therapist to whom this applies. To them the practice of physical therapy is unstimulating and their prospects are dismal.

The worst part of all this is that the culture now has no choice but to draw the same conclusions about our profession given this increasingly common experience.

There’s no fixing that.

[gerry]

Gary,

I appreciate your patient's response. I was looking for a PT in my town who was able to approach my shoulder injury from more of a neuro perspective and came across a PT who bragged about having people cry in therapy. And they thought this would impress me, making me want them to work on my shoulder... Go figure.

[Diane]

I find it interesting that the area of the brain most likely to create the inner cringe response to "insult" from attitudes like this is called the "insula", same root. "Insul-", Latin for "compartmentalize" I suppose? Just a coincidence, but an ironic one. I wish all the dominatrix people would get out of my profession.