Top 5 Fridays! 5 Things I Wish I Learned In School | Modern Manual Therapy Blog - Manual Therapy, Videos, Neurodynamics, Podcasts, Research Reviews

Top 5 Fridays! 5 Things I Wish I Learned In School


This edition of Top 5 Fridays comes from Dennis Treubig, PT, DPT, SCS, SFMA, CSCS

Over my years of practicing, there have been many thoughts, ideas, principles, etc. that I have adopted which have made me a better clinician.  These changes have helped to make my treatments more effective and efficient and thus, improve patient outcomes.  My only wish is that I had learned these things in school (or at least earlier on in my career). 

In PT school, I was primarily taught a pathoanatomical, evidence-based approach to diagnosing and treating patients (which suited my scientific, analytical mind well).  While I feel this approach is comprehensive and probably the best route to go for educating students on the vast amount of material to cover, I also think it is incomplete.  But don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking my schooling.  In fact, I am extremely grateful for the solid foundation of knowledge and clinical skills I received at the University of Delaware (and I always highly recommend their program).  This solid foundation has allowed me to readily further develop my knowledge and clinical “toolbox.”  I just wish they had educated/exposed us to some of the following ideas that have made me a more effective clinician (and if you read this blog regularly, I’m probably preaching to the choir). 

1. Your treatments are not that specific and not that deforming

Not being that specific refers primarily to treatments regarding the spine.  Research says that when locating a specific spinal segment, inter-rater reliability is ±1 level.  So basically, 3 clinicians can try to palpate “T5” and all end up on different segments.  And there is just no way that your joint mobilizations/manipulations are moving only 1 segment at a time (the body isn’t that “disconnected”), rather they are moving a bunch of segments together.  So put this all together and you realize we are just treating general regions of the spine – and that’s fine…and effective…and less stressful/time-consuming to you!

By not that deforming I mean we aren’t “stretching” or “lengthening” soft tissue like we think we do.  If soft tissue “stretched” that easily, we would all be super-flexible and probably collapse to the ground like a wet noodle.  Typical example: a clinician “stretches” a patient’s hamstring and after doing five 10-second holds, the patient achieves more hip flexion.  Did we just lengthen the patient’s hamstrings!?  Of course not, rather we just elicited a neurophysiological response and altered the tone (the premise of contract-relax “stretching”).  One research article found that it took hundreds and hundreds or pounds of force to change the length of fascia 1% and even that was transient.  Let’s look at another typical scenario: performing a massage or doing joint mobilizations to break up scar tissue.  Think about how a surgeon gets rid of scar tissue – they open you up and cut it with a scalpel.  I’m not saying that it is impossible for the body to break up scar tissue, rather our fingers are unlikely to do it; repetitive/frequent movement by the patient will lead to mobility improvements.  If you make any significant changes in mobility within a treatment session, it is due to neurophysiological changes. 

2.  Develop or adopt a movement assessment system (adopting one is a lot easier)

In school, we looked at how people moved and the quality of their movement at times, but more often than not we were taking goniometric measurements, manual muscle testing, and performing special tests.  When I go back and think about those days, I realize that for some patients I had lots of objective measurements, but I really didn’t have an idea of how they actually moved.  We did not follow any system or have standardized terminology, so assessment varied from clinician to clinician.  The concept of regional interdependence was taught to us in school, but I don’t think I truly understood its vast implications and significance until I started assessing movement patterns.  The system I have come to like is the SFMA (and I’m not saying you have to use this system, just letting you know what I use).  It seems complicated when you first get exposed to it, but it is actually rather simple, I really like the terminology it uses, and it is easily reproducible/reportable between clinicians.   Using the SFMA has definitely made my treatments more effective and efficient (and no, I don’t use it on every patient and I don’t necessarily go through the entire assessment on a patient, but I do use big chunks of it all the time).

3.  Understand the modern science of pain

The recent science behind how we perceive/feel pain has developed greatly and subsequently debunked older views.  Understanding how pain is a multi-factorial output from the brain (and I’m really summarizing this) will make you a better clinician by improving the way you interact with and educate your patients - both on how/why they are in pain and what your treatments are actually doing.  I don’t want to go into much detail here because it could be an entire article on its own and I also don’t think I would do it justice.  I highly recommend you either read Therapeutic Neuroscience Education by Adriaan Louw or take a course from him (there are other clinicians out there who teach courses on it, I just found Adriaan easy to listen to).

4.  How to better pick CEU courses

I wish someone had told me to prioritize courses that teach you a skill, rather than purely didactic courses.  Early on in my career I attended a bunch of lecture-based courses and, in addition to being expensive (registration fees, travel expenses, etc.), I didn’t find myself getting that much out of them.  Many of them felt like a review course for what I had learned in school.  And with the improvements in technology, why go to a didactic course when you can just view it online from the comforts of your own home and on your own time.  If there is a didactic course that you would like to take, see if it is offered online or via webcam.  I personally use Medbridge for those types of courses – they have a slew of courses on all different topics.  Courses that teach you a skill give you more tools to put in your clinical toolbox and actually use on patients – these types of courses should take priority over anything else.

5.  Diagnostic imaging is essentially clinically irrelevant

As physical therapists, we treat people and what they complain of and how they move, not MRIs.  I tell this to patients all the time and it amazes me how most of them still look at me with a puzzled look when I say this.  This is especially true for spinal imaging/tests – I have never had a patient who feels better after getting a spinal MRI or EMG.  They always show something and all it seems to do is increase patients’ anxiety and put more fear in them. They also tend to “rule in” more invasive (and possibly unnecessary) procedures – whether it be injections, surgery, etc.  Numerous studies have shown high percentages of MRI “abnormalities” in asymptomatic people (i.e. disc pathologies, rotator-cuff pathologies, arthritis).  This isn’t to say that I think diagnostic imaging is useless; just that they are grossly overused and you shouldn’t make your diagnosis and develop your treatment plan based on imaging results.

This list could obviously be longer, but those 5 things covered a few different aspects of our field and seemed like a good starting point. What are some things you wished you had learned in school or earlier in your career?

Dennis received his Doctorate of Physical Therapy from the University of Delaware and is a Board Certified Specialist in Sports Physical Therapy by the APTA.  He is also a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and is SFMA Certified.  Dennis currently practices at ProHEALTH Physical Therapy in Lake Success, NY.




edit - Amen, Dennis, echoes many of the messages I impart in my blog and courses. What can drive this change? Newer grads/current students are very fortunate with all of the amazing resources out there available to you. You do not have to make the same mistakes and learn the hard way like Dennis and I did.

Keeping it Eclectic....

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