Poor Compliance

Over the two placements I have had, the thing that I have found most difficult about treating patients is when we have to treat patients who have a very poor internal locus of control which affects their motivation to help themselves and be compliant with exercise.

Especially in my musculo placement I found that a lot of people come in just to get a massage, despite education and advice if it was regarding postural education, they would listen in the session then return the following appointment reporting that they had not done any of the exercises, and when you ask why not there was always a very poor excuse regarding their non compliance.

This is the part of the job that is less rewarding as it makes you almost question how good you are as a therapist and whether or not you just aren’t doing it right.

So from my time on my placements I’ve been able to get over the point that it isn’t us as therapists who aren’t doing there best to help these patients, sometimes we just have to give in to defeat and realise that sometimes the patients just don’t have the drive to help themselves and to get better, despite coming to physio, they really do just want the quick fix and that’s just not what we do. We can only give the patients the tools and advice to help them, help themselves and in many cases people do need our manual techniques to help them on their road to recovery but especially with postural pain patients as we all know, its advice, education and active exercises that makes up the majority of the treatment session.

And once again it’s when you realise that you can not do anything more for the patient in regards to their impairment, that’s what makes you a better physio in the end. Because for a patient to get better, they need to either want to get better or have self motivation to help them on their way to get better and reach there goals and they’re the patients that make the job rewarding.