Going Door to Door
Sometimes I feel like those missionaries riding around and knocking on doors to spread the "good news" about exercising. I will often go door to door in the facility trying to get patients up and moving to regain their mobility and health. There are times I am successful and times I get turned down, cursed at and have doors slammed in my face. I can't always shake the dust from my feet and walk away due to the current system of getting a UH (ultra high) versus an H (high) level RUG. So I end up working hard at finding common ground with the patients and go from there.
And I got to thinking about the whole thing about selling therapy to patients and whose job it should be to do that. Shouldn't the state boards and the national organization invest more in advertising our profession so we don't have to use 15 minutes of our time to convince and talk every patient into spending an hour out of their day with us? If I have a caseload of 12 people, approximately three hours of my day is used trying to convince people they need us.
With proper advertisement (from state and national centers), people will want to come to us and we will no longer have to convince them of the benefits. Licensure is expensive and I don't know exactly where all the money goes after I write the check, but I know it doesn't go for billboard space off the interstate.
Paid sponsors like ex-President Bill Clinton could tell how wonderful therapy was (he did in his book) and certainly there are pro athletes who know what therapists can do to get them back into the game. A media blitz about therapy would certainly boost our profession as well as how we are perceived by the patients we treat in every setting.
So why isn't physical therapy being "sold" more to the public?