Why do my patients don't respond well to my treatments ? ...Maybe it's an education problem !!

Imagine this situation, a patient came for a physiotherapy session after a physician referral for a hip replacement surgery. The patient is a 76 years old female with overweight status. She asks the physiotherapist if she will be able to walk alone after 1 month of rehabilitation. He jumps to conclusions, and he tells her that she could do that based on her improvement and response to the protocol. 

After 1 month the patient tries to walk alone with no assistance, and she fell on her knees resulting in some micro-fractures on her femur, and delaying her functional progress for more than 3 months!!! 

This scenario could have been prevented if the physiotherapist educated the woman on the safe ways to walk until the muscle strength and the walking gait comes to its normal state.

Patient education is one of the most important aspects of patient management, because it’s the breakthrough towards an understanding of the health problem by the patient and the gain of trust by the physiotherapist. 

Why Educate the patient?

When a patient has a problem in his body, all kinds of questions come to his mind, especially if it's his first encounter with a physiotherapy experience... Why am I feeling this sensation? Could it be a tumor, because I heard that my friend who was diagnosed with colon tumor had the same symptoms ?? Why do i need physiotherapy anyway?? Will some movements relieve my pain? I hope that my boss does not fire me or I will be doomed?

Tons of questions come to the mind of our patients that they want us to answer them and to give them guidance …I'll repeat it again, They want GUIDANCE!!

When we educate our patients about their problems …they become more engaged, and they give their best in the afterward sessions. They seem happy and comfortable with the treatments that we deliver to them.

What is Patient education? 

It’s the process of transitioning the patient from a skeptical, doubtful situation to a clearer and well understood state about their health problems, the ongoing physiotherapy treatments and anticipated outcomes at the end.

So anything helps you to make that transition for your patient is considered as patient education. You can convince them verbally, gestural or with the intermediate of illustrations or animated videos. I repeat anything that could help you to make that transition is allowed for use.

Last time, a patient with chronic pain in his neck came for a physiotherapy session to relieve his pain. I made my examination and it has been a problem of postural misalignment and trunk muscle weakness. 

The patient had in mind that a quick fix was the absolute treatment, so if I started making my interventions to correct his posture and strengthen muscles, which usually takes time. He will feel that there is no progress and no improvement will occur.

The idea was to explain the neck problem to the patient from the beginning of its onset, and selling them the fact that a quick fix isn’t going to solve his pain at the long term run. He can use medications for that, but if the desired outcome is for the long run, the treatment will take a little longer than what our the patient was expecting it to be!!

The magical thing is that the patient after the explanations he seems to understand the situation and accepted the afterward engagement and treatment plan.

Conclusion :

So as you can see the education of the patient is one of the most important skills that any professional physiotherapist should master, it gives more ease, relieves anxiety from our patients and builds their trust in our treatment programs.

Dozens of question will pop-up in your mind after that:

•   How can I educate my patients? Especially those who are illiterate?
•   Does education only for the first session?
•   I’m bad at explaining things, how can I improve my skill?

The upcoming articles will be for the sake of answering these questions and make the patient education an undeniable pillar in our patient management.

So how do you educate your patients? Do you have a personal style? What are your insights on patient education?

Younes Oummahya,