Episode 31 – Dr. Helen Clare, Part 2: Patient Responses That Keep Her Going and What Helps the Most

Helen Clare

Australia| PhD (USyd), FACP, Dip MDT, Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist

SHOW NOTES

Strengths

It’s our assessment process and its ability to identify appropriate patients who will respond and those that won’t.  Other strengths include our ability self management and patient involvement.  Eventually, these strengths will include the cost savings as that becomes more sought after.

A Memorable Patient

No one patient comes to mind but the scenario of a patient whose symptoms have persisted through many prior treatments or other attempts without success and then during a slight adjustment of a movement or with subtle deviation the patient shows sudden and dramatic improvement or relief and their common response is “why hasn’t someone shown me to do this before?” quickly followed by, “how can something so simple as this be so effective?” 

Analogy for Patient Education

Demonstration of forward head position is more effective than just telling and much more.

Best Advice

Listen to your patients and they will tell you how they need to be treated. The problem is we have to be able to listen.

Doing Different than Years Prior

More education, talking, explanations.  Less procedures, less techniques.

Resources She Wouldn’t Do Without

Fellow MDT faculty are very valuable and impressive.  From a research perspective, PEDro is a clinical research database that includes well researched summaries.  You can find that here.

Impactful Research Studies

No recent study has impacted her clinical practice.  Due to her experience of doing research herself some has validated what she’s already been doing and her involvement of producing studies has allowed her to be more critical in determining the quality of the study. 

Personal Habit the Contributes to Her Success

Good listening skills and the ability to apply a good clinical reasoning process.  Obtaining the information and its implications as the patient gives their history.

If you’d like to reach Dr. Clare you can reach her at clare.ha@bigpond.com

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