jessephysio

Earlier tonight I was watching an Inner Circle webinar from Mike Reinold. The webinar was discussing 5 common stretches we probably shouldn’t be doing and like anything else I’ve watched from Mike, it was a nice review with great content. During the Q & A part at the end, a physio asked if we are getting too fancy as new clinicians and favouring movement and neurodevelopmental approaches to assessment in favour of the basics? Are we jumping into Kolar and Yanda before understanding the basic work of Kendal, Magee, and Colby etc? In answering this young physios question, Mike stated:

“We’re seeing a lot of new grads coming out of PT school and they’re FMS certified, maybe SFMA etc. They’re doing PRI and DNS classes. They get all these funky things that they’re doing but they don’t know how to treat a joint. They can’t get people strong and mobile or much of anything else, yet they are trying to stimulate peoples diaphragms. It’s great to have the training in these things, but you must have the basics down first.”

– Mike Reinold, Inner Circle Webinar

I think this was an excellent reply from Mike as I also think social media has “pressured” us to take every con-ed course under the sun in the name of becoming “better”. But is taking seminar after seminar in the hopes of finding answers really making us better? Or is just making us more confused? I think taking con-ed is very important and have done my fare share, but I also think keeping the basics in mind is just as important. We have to understand stages of healing, true pathology, arthro and osetokinematics, normal ranges of motion and biopsychosocial care paradigms before we can start assessing crawling and rolling. These assessments are warranted and should be done, but not because we think we should to be “trendy”. They should be done only when you know exactly why you are doing it and how having that information will alter your subsequent treatment and exercise prescription. In talking to many therapists as of late, I have come to the sad conclusion that many do all kinds of movement’s screens and other fancy assessment techniques, but ultimately utilize the same interventions regardless of what their assessment tells them. Why? Because they don’t yet know what they should do with the information they have obtained. This could be because instead of truly mastering the basics, they have taken course after course but really don’t know what to do with the information they have been given. This may lead to confusion and frustration on the part of the therapist…sort of like paralysis by analysis. Personally I have chosen to slow down my course registrations per year because I believe it’s about quality, not quantity. I rather take a course and master it’s concepts to the best of my abilities before jumping into something else. I used to feel like I had to know it all now. I have a long career ahead of me and will take my time in getting these tools under my belt. I have actually found that I get better results when I stick with one form of care instead of jumping around from technique to technique in the hopes of finding that magic bullet.

I think having the desire to learn more is admirable and is something I can relate to. But I have come to learn that you can’t absorb it all right away. Learning through experiences via treating complex patients and even failing is what makes us better. As long as we are constantly being introspective about our practice and figuring ways to try and be better the next time I see nothing but a bright future for our profession!