See me, teach me, guide me, but it’s up to me!

Working with people who are recovering from an injury, operation or the side effects of a disease has had an impact in my way of thinking. You realize many patients are struggling, they are not at their best but in most cases trying very hard to move forward, recover and go back to their normal lives. As much as I love scientific evidence, especially when it is applicable to my daily practice; this kind of articles are very much needed (as always, the link to the original journal is below). A nice reminder that Mr. John Doe is not “a hip surgery” or Mrs Janet Doe is not “a back pain”.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21679169.2019.1650394?src=

Recently I have attended to an Oncology rehabilitation course where some of the aspects discussed around exercise prescription have to do with “when, for how long, and how”, meaning that we need to adapt to social and psychological factors. Quite frequently, we find time restrictions as, for example, work commitments, family issues or childcare. Tiredness or lack of motivation also can determine the adherence to the prescribed exercise program. This obviously could have an impact on the expected progression, and many times we can begin blaming our patients because “they are not following our instructions”. Consequently, this would affect the patient/therapist relationship likely leading to complications in the recovery or rehabilitation fail.

How can we avoid this situation? To answer this, I quote “The value of the patients’ perspective has attracted increasing interest over the past decade to further improve care pathways, quality of care and outcomes for patients”. Clinically, the understanding of healing processes has optimized care pathways to help reduce complications and side effects and to palliate symptoms; but, we are still missing the most important aspect in many occasions. In the center of all this, we have a person; an individual with their own views, opinions and experiences; someone that wants to be heard and who wants to take part on their recovery.