patient education

From my Musc OP placement, I found that patients often come to the clinic with a minimal understanding of their condition and I found patient education played a big role as part of the management for the patients. I realised building rapport with them first is also very important to get their trust and confidence to what we are telling them. Also, helping them with understanding the problem, the anatomy and telling them “why” we are doing specific things were important as well. I had a patient with post RCR repair, on the road to end of recovery, had minimal functional limitations and the only thing he is complaining about is getting pain at end abduction, ER (sort of reaching backwards)- impingement position. I had to tell him that that was normal and explained the anatomy of the shoulder and how the scapula is invovled with shoulder movement. This got more compliance from the patient to do the scapula setting exercises (and to do them properly!) and I believe the patient had a greater knowledge of how he can get better. It was great to see the patient was happy with my explanation and I must say I found it a little challenging to explain it in easy terms so he can understand what I was saying(about the Scapulohumeral rhythm). I think I did well with explaination and patient education and I believe this is an important aspect of treatment. The patient was discharged around 3 sessions after.