"Am I pretty enough?"Newly graduated physical therapists come armed with knowledge of tests and measures that can answer painful clinical questions and help patients get better, quicker.
We have available free resources - outcomes scales like OPTIMAL, DASH and LEFS that only 48% of us use...
We use validated and reliable performance tests (video) that predict function, such as future falls risk.
Yet we follow-up graduation with an often mad-cap rush to consume various 'flavors' of physical therapy techniques that promise to get the patient better and help us answer the question...
"Am I good enough?"A new study in PT Journal found that physical therapists in the Netherlands preferred 'homegrown' methods of assessing, treating and diagnosing patients in place of government sponsored 'Guidelines'.
Compliance through competence
I am a big fan of standardization and EBP in physical therapy and I'd like to see more of it in clinical practice.
What I'd also like to see more of is a mindset that Medicare compliance should not be dictated to physical therapists by a self-annointed group of 'Medicare expert/auditors' whose livelihood comes from selling annual updates to physical therapists in the forms of seminars and webinars.
Where is that 'homegrown', self-sufficiency when it comes to Medicare compliance?
When will physical therapists find an innovative, cost-effective way to measure Medicare compliance the way we measure outcomes, performance and impairments in patients?
When will we take back our practice from the 'green eyeshades' in Washington DC who want physical therapy in 8-minute chunks?
What's the matter?
"Aren't we smart enough?"
