The Importance Of Physical Therapy

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The physical therapy profession in most recent years has experienced an identity transformation. Anybody enduring an identity change typically suffers a selfhood crisis, characterized by role confusion, conflicting expectations, and lack of direction. Although these kind of words sound sort of gloomy there are great positive advantages of having identity “revisions” in our lives and in our professions. An article in Psychology Today (Krauss, 2012) points out that exploring our identity, forces us to think seriously about the issues we confront and the path we want to embark. Physical Therapists are at a stage in their careers (despite of how long they have been PT’s) with serious decisions to make. Do they want to remain doing what was done …show more content…

I am actually discussing those cases with them since we are learning together! I have encouraged them to initiate this practice with our main referral sources because there is an already established baseline standard of communication and mutual professional respectful relationship with them. These are MD’s willing to hear what we have to say plus they have openly recognized physical therapy is outside of their scope of practice. In two (2) cases, when the imaging testing results were obtained, the MD’s shared the reports AND the films with the PT for her to “view” the results. I was able to see them too and better understand what the reports actually meant. Some of our therapists have accompanied the patient to the appointment to collaborate with the MD’s face to face. I am aware this model may not be possible for all, but in our case has helped fostering those conversations. Our two newest PT’s (with doctorate degrees) have started to discuss imaging findings with the patients/families as a clinical resource …show more content…

The potential solution is to continue working with our primary referral sources increasing our professional reputation with them in this area. The hope is that word of mouth communication (physicians passing the information to other physicians) will expand their interest to collaborate with us. Typical physician concerns about direct access and expanded physical therapist involvement in additional fields include but are not limited to service overutilization, increased costs, and inappropriate care. A research report in APTA (Mitchell and de Lissovoy, 1997) supported that direct access episodes are typically short in duration and more cost effective making the MD’s concerns unwarranted. If physicians are onboard with this concept, we would have greater opportunities for the medical insurances to embrace physical therapists participation in the imaging technique

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