“You ask a lot of questions”. I hear this a lot from patients when they attend our clinic, and they are not wrong. Some people are surprised by the level of detail that is involved when asking about someone’s injury. But when it comes to treating patients effectively in a physiotherapy clinic, communication is paramount.
There are a few different reasons for this. Firstly, a lack of understanding about what patients are expecting from us can lead to patients being dissatisfied. Patients’ goals and the activities that they want to return to guide us and help to formulate a more bespoke treatment plan. An elderly gentleman looking to return to gardening and a young lady looking to return to competitive power lifting will have very different expectations of their bodies and very different expectations from us. Also, patients may have had physiotherapy before and have an idea about what they would like (or not like). For example, many patients love hands-on care, others might prefer acupuncture, whilst some just want a clear diagnosis and the best exercises. We will offer suggestions based on what we think will get the best results but will certainly listen to your preferences and include them whenever we can.
Secondly, in the vast majority of situations, getting a good history from a patient provides us with the best information to form a diagnosis. For the majority of musculoskeletal conditions, there are stereotypical signs and symptoms that can point you in the right direction for a diagnosis. This pattern recognition of symptoms allows us to have a list of possible diagnoses before we have even touched the patient. 80% of the time, we will know the diagnosis after just asking the right questions. However, some conditions can have similar symptoms to other conditions, and this is why we always follow up with a hands-on assessment to test our working diagnosis.
Lastly, we ask questions for safety purposes. Certain medical conditions mean that some of our forms of treatment may be inappropriate or may cause more harm than good. If for example, you have been on long-term steroids or blood thinners, then some hands-on techniques are not a good idea. In addition to this, there are certain “red flag” symptoms that can highlight signs of more sinister medical conditions. These symptoms are sometimes subtle and often don’t cause patients much concern, and because of this, I often tell my patients, “There are symptoms that scare patients, there are symptoms that scare us, and they are not the same symptoms”.
If you would like any further advice on injury prevention or exercise, we would love to help. If an injury is preventing you from doing the things that you love, please call us on 01276 37670 to book a physiotherapy appointment. Alternatively, you can book online by clicking the button below
Thanks for reading
Dom Walcott (BSc MCSP SRP)
Clinical Lead at Thorpes Physiotherapy