What does it mean to Find Your Fix?

Throughout physiotherapy school I learned a LOT about the body. What I didn't seem to learn enough about was the person inside that body. I realized very quickly when starting my career that I needed to address WHY a person moves as much as I needed to address HOW they move. If you've seen me in clinic you know that more than half of our initial session is spent talking. It wasn't until I started asking the right questions that I started to get the answers I was looking for.

It's a given that patients will come to us when they are in pain. What I've become really interested in is what is that pain preventing them from doing. Chances are they've been in pain for awhile, but what activity have they had to stop that has brought them to our door? It's so important to highlight this as soon as possible so you can start to tap into their motivation for recovery. Self management becomes much easier when you are able to tailor your programs to activity specific goals rather than chasing pain. Using these activity based goals in your education, whether you're describing shoulder mechanics or the complexities of pain science, makes for much more digestible content in the eyes of the patient.

Once I started reading material from pages like The Level Up Initiative, and Modern Manual Therapy that I started to realize that the biomechanical, structure specific way that I was approaching patients may have been missing the most important piece of the puzzle--the patient themselves. It was then that I started challenging myself to start asking questions like "What are you afraid of in regards to this injury?" and "What motivates you to get better?". By understanding crucial aspects of rehabilitation such as prior knowledge and experiences you will be able to address the biases that you and your patients bring to the table.

For me, the "fix" is the finding the "why" connected to each patient's physiotherapy journey. Find Your Fix resonates with me because understanding and connecting with my patients is the fulfillment that I crave from this profession. From a patient standpoint the phrase works just as well. It's about empowering them to understand their motivation, unlock the necessary lifestyle changes, and learn the exercises they need to fix whatever problem they walked in with.

#motivation #empowerment #collaborate