Celebrating National Physiotherapy Month of May
It is the month again when we remember the importance of physiotherapy in our health care system and celebrate with our colleagues across the nation. It is wonderful physiotherapy has been listed as an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic. It validates how we as physiotherapists are helping people and making a difference in their lives. We struggle sometimes with our professional identity as different professions are doing parts of what we do. However, the reality is that we are unique as a profession bridging the medial doctors and patients' recovery, with wide ranges of expertise from neurological, pulmonary, musculoskeletal rehab to wound healing. Sometimes if not most of the time we serve an important role to guide patients when doctors are too busy to comment on patients' long road of recovery after seeing them briefly for a few minutes.
A perfect example that happened to our family recently was that my mother injured one of her right fingers, which resulted in a mallet finger or a baseball finger. Her family doctor referred her to purchase a splint from the pharmacy that was not as supportive to her finger joints due to the tendon injury as the splint I made with a popsicle stick. The good thing was that the referral to the hand therapy clinic was worth a wait of 2 weeks. It confirmed the mallet finger injury diagnosis by the specialist with a second x-ray and my mom could now see the therapists (OT and PT both) to make a proper splint with plaster for 2 weeks and then with rubber to keep the finger joints steady for another 6 weeks to allow the finger extensor tendon to heal.
The real importance of having the physiotherapist on this case demonstrated itself when we took off the splint at the end of the 6-week period. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were not able to see the specialist in person to assess the recovery and the doctor did not refer her to start the hand therapy. His only question to my mom was "how is your finger" as if my mom could self assess herself and his only instruction was "wear the splint only at night". Her finger became red and swollen and the distal finger joint became more and more bent after one week without the splint during the day. I told my mom to start wearing the splint during the day again and phoned the hand therapy clinic to speak to the physiotherapist urgently. The physiotherapist was able to view some pictures of my mom's finger and scheduled us a video visit, from which she was able to tell us that usually they would recommend patients to gradually wane off the splint from 1 hour a day for a few days then 2-3 hours a day for another few days and so on. I was dumbfounded and could only pray that it would not be too late to correct the extensor tendon re-injury by taking the splint off completely too fast.
Only time can tell. We are still on the 3rd week of waning off the splint as this blog is composed. Needless to say, we are so grateful to be able to phone the physiotherapist and obtain the correct instructions on waning off the splint, which the doctor is not even aware of. I will update on my mom's mallet finger recovery later again and also will now need to buy some leuko K tape to support my mom's extensor tendon next week when she can start to be without the splint for 4-6 hours a day during the day. I even learned a taping technique for the finger during our video visit with the physiotherapist! Had it not been the physiotherapist who had experience with the mallet finger, I would not have known the proper way to help my mom's finger to recover.
Has your life been changed by a physiotherapist? please share your story and celebrate the National Physiotherapy Month of May!
A perfect example that happened to our family recently was that my mother injured one of her right fingers, which resulted in a mallet finger or a baseball finger. Her family doctor referred her to purchase a splint from the pharmacy that was not as supportive to her finger joints due to the tendon injury as the splint I made with a popsicle stick. The good thing was that the referral to the hand therapy clinic was worth a wait of 2 weeks. It confirmed the mallet finger injury diagnosis by the specialist with a second x-ray and my mom could now see the therapists (OT and PT both) to make a proper splint with plaster for 2 weeks and then with rubber to keep the finger joints steady for another 6 weeks to allow the finger extensor tendon to heal.
The real importance of having the physiotherapist on this case demonstrated itself when we took off the splint at the end of the 6-week period. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were not able to see the specialist in person to assess the recovery and the doctor did not refer her to start the hand therapy. His only question to my mom was "how is your finger" as if my mom could self assess herself and his only instruction was "wear the splint only at night". Her finger became red and swollen and the distal finger joint became more and more bent after one week without the splint during the day. I told my mom to start wearing the splint during the day again and phoned the hand therapy clinic to speak to the physiotherapist urgently. The physiotherapist was able to view some pictures of my mom's finger and scheduled us a video visit, from which she was able to tell us that usually they would recommend patients to gradually wane off the splint from 1 hour a day for a few days then 2-3 hours a day for another few days and so on. I was dumbfounded and could only pray that it would not be too late to correct the extensor tendon re-injury by taking the splint off completely too fast.
Only time can tell. We are still on the 3rd week of waning off the splint as this blog is composed. Needless to say, we are so grateful to be able to phone the physiotherapist and obtain the correct instructions on waning off the splint, which the doctor is not even aware of. I will update on my mom's mallet finger recovery later again and also will now need to buy some leuko K tape to support my mom's extensor tendon next week when she can start to be without the splint for 4-6 hours a day during the day. I even learned a taping technique for the finger during our video visit with the physiotherapist! Had it not been the physiotherapist who had experience with the mallet finger, I would not have known the proper way to help my mom's finger to recover.
Has your life been changed by a physiotherapist? please share your story and celebrate the National Physiotherapy Month of May!
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