THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!! THANK YOU!! for bringing to the forefront, one of
those areas that we can achieve a definitive victory in. The control and
dissemination of CORRECT information and terminologies.
An orthosis is an orthosis, to those of us who practice Orthotics!!!!
(Unless there is more than one, then they are orthoses)
I worked for a practitioner who insisted that most patients are only
educated to an eight grade level, therefore I was instructed to “dumb
down” my conversations with my patients so they wouldn’t be “insulted” by
my use of “medical” terminology and/or explanations. I found my patients
were more insulted by my patronizing them and assuming they couldn’t
understand , while achieving my best results by educating them to the
correct medical terminology and explaining the rationale (I E:
BIO-MECHANICS AND PATHO-MECHANICS) behind why I was doing what I was
doing, and going to attempt to do to them. They tended to be much more
compliant and involved, when I empowered them in the rehab process.
What is my point? Is it not our responsibility to educate and advance
our patients through this extremely personal and involved process of
rehabilitation?
Consider:
Scientist at NASA had developed a gun built specifically to launch dead
chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets, and the space
shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea was to simulate the
frequent incidents of collisions with air borne fowl to test the strength
of the windshields.
British engineers heard of the gun, and were eager to test it on the
windshields of their new high speed trains.
Arrangements were made.
When the gun fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurtled
out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to
smithereens, crashed through the control console, snapped the engineer’s
backrest in two and imbedded itself in the back wall of the cabin.
The test was repeated, with the same disastrous results.
Horrified, the Brit’s sent NASA the disastrous results of the
experiment’s, along with the design of the windshield. They begged the
US Scientist for suggestions.
NASA’s response was just one sentence.
“THAW THE CHICKEN!!!!”
The moral: It’s often what we don’t explain to our patients, that lead
to avoidable failures.
Keep on the education/clarification/information tract!!!!!
Mike Madden BOC(O&P),C.Ped
