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- I come to your office trusting that you will touch my body with professionalism. I don't need your pity or your zeal. I just want some body work/physical therapy. If you cannot work on/with me, please tell me.
- I come to your office in the expectation that you will respect me as a person and not just as a body that you are about to treat. You may be excited about what you can do for me, but my goals, as recorded on your intake sheet, are more important.
- I rely on your expertise in your discipline, but I also need you to know that I am the expert on my particular body.
- There is no one shot takes all modality that best suits my physicality. And if there were, I would have done it ages ago. I am not here for you to cure me. We are working together to make my body the best it can be.
- I don't want to hear about the latest herbal slime that someone else's grandmother took while standing on her head. Stick to your area of expertise.
- I appreciate the fact that you may have done extra reading to help you treat "someone like me." Please remember that each "case" is different and that I may not respond as well as the person you read about.
- Failure to "improve" according to schedule does not mean that I am noncompliant and that I am not doing the homework. Nor should it change your attitude towards me.
- I am simply a client; I am not to be "showcased" to other clients or discussed/gossiped about with other practitioners. Consultation is likely to be fine, but please ask first.
- My response to pain is likely to be different from that of many of your other clients. Telling me to push through it may not be the most productive approach.
- If these sound like common sense principles to you, principles so obvious that they should not need to be stated, I would agree with you. Please know, however, that I have experienced the opposite of all of them in my short life as a disabled person.
7 comments:
Damn! That needs to be made into a poster.
andrea
This was fantastic, and I've had very little experience of PT. I wonder if there's a way you could send this to physiotherapists colleges or something?
I don't want to hear about the latest herbal slime that someone else's grandmother took while standing on her head.
This made me laugh out loud. I so know how that is.
Excellent. I wish I'd had a list like this to show every doctor and therapist I had while in rehab.
I want to hear about the herbal slime someone's grandmother took while standing on her head- if granny can still stand on her head, it must be pretty good for the joints!
Kidding (mostly) but I agree you should send this list to someone or other who can distribute it to students in the field.
Yessssssssss. And, if I may add one: The fact that I'm standing in the waiting room to see a different bodyworker/PT does not mean that I want to hear about what you and your specialty can do for me.
Laughing at the grandma-on-her-head herbal slime (both the original and "if she can do that" comment) here too... But seriously, I completely understand that one -- my mother has lately developed a need to tell me about (and cling to, no matter how ridiculous) all of the health/cure fads she hears about on TV. Sigh.
Really excellent guidelines. I'd like to give these to my physios, but I think I'd be labelled 'difficult'... Sigh. Great stuff, though - thanks.
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