Treating Complex Patients
The past week has been quite exciting. I now have patients with polymyositis, post reactive streptococcal arthritis that lead to a total shoulder arthroplasty, MS status post ORIF, and a post polio syndrome/post cervical fusion patient who is now fused C3-5 and T2-L2. Needless to say this has been a very exciting week.
I must admit with each of these patients I felt like a deer caught in headlights because I had never seen anything like these before. On top of that, I got two of them in one day. Part of me wanted to freak out and have my CI do the evaluations, but I figured that these were some pretty rare patients especially for the setting that I am in, so I should take advantage of it.
Luckily, I was able to calm myself down so that I could successfully complete the evaluations. Granted, I took about 10 to 15minutes longer with these evaluations because there were times that I almost became lost with myself--some of the patients had so much going on that I found it incredibly difficult to focus on just one or two things. Though they were extremely challenging, I MADE IT! I was able to complete all of them independently for the most part, and I have treated two of the patients with much success within one to two visits.
I realized its important to have confidence in yourself, especially with these patients, because they can feed off of your energy. So even if you are freaking out on the inside, if the patient sees you as confident, then they are more confident and easier to treat in the end.
Whoa, glad that I got those out of the way!!!