I had my gerontology placement this semester and quickly found out that treating some of these elderly patients can be much more difficult than I originally had imagined. One of the biggest boundaries to a successful treatment session was keeping the patient's attention to the current task. With a limited amount of time available for treatment (follow up appointments were 30 minutes) it was very important to be time efficient. This, however, was sometimes very challenging as the patients could be very chatty, and I often found myself in conversations that were very hard to get out of. Reasons it was difficult to switch the focus of the treatment back to physio-related tasks were often because the topics patients would talk about were often very important to them, and as some of the patients lived alone, they could be quite lonely with limited people to talk to.

It could sometimes be extremely frustrating trying to keep patients motivated to the treatment session. I often felt bad having to cut the patients off and switch their attention, but this was necessary due to the time constraints.

This situation has taught me that although we sometimes would love to sit down and have a chat with these patients, we need to keep in mind that our purpose is to provide a service as a physiotherapist and in order to provide an effective treatment, we need to ensure that we keep focused on the task at hand. Therefore, we should get to know a few techniques to use when confrunted with these situations for future patients.