THINKING OF EVERY PATIENT AS AN ATHLETE.
A Sports Physio’s Toolkit: Thinking of every patient as an athlete.
For our many patients, being considered as an athlete has advantages beyond being seen as dignified for playing a game. When we see our patient as an athlete, we provide our patients with many of the top-shelf Sports Physio tools we readily deploy managing a sports injury.
When treating an athlete, a Sports Physio will focus on setting up a sound return to play plan. We work out the physical demands of the sport. We establish training goals. We aim to keep our athletes as active as possible while recovering. We establish clear, performance criteria to minimise re-injury risks. We discuss our plan with not only the athlete, but happily go out of our way to communicate with coaches. We take great pride in seeing our athletes succeed.
After all, no self-respecting Sports Physio clinic is complete without the customary collection of framed athletic wear.
However, this type of approach need not be out of reach for the many patients we have mistakenly judged to be non-athletes.
One simple way to transform your Physio approach is to think of all patients as athletes.
Now this isn’t the default for most of us clinicians. Firstly, we tend to jump to conclusions as to how athletic our patients are. Sadly, this largely occurs by the time we’ve walked with them into our treatment rooms.
Secondly, we have our own hierarchy of athletic tasks. We are influenced by return to sport criteria used with athletes in their 20s, infographics that highlight the makeup of healthy and elite athletes, and by the countless displays of amazing feats of human performance seen on our social medial feeds.
Our mental hierarchy places professional athletes at the top and then unfairly serve as a reference point for our patient’s physical abilities. This can lead to our assessment being influenced by an anchoring bias. We go on to assess our patient’s athleticism and activity and compare them to the highest performing humans on the planet.
Slightly unfair.
By zooming out from this myopic view that places all of our patients on the same rating scale of athleticism we can view each patient as an athlete within their own ecosystem and benefit from the Sports Physio’s approach to managing an athlete’s injury.
Not every athlete plays a sport.
The first step in this process is removing the objective of a patient’s activity as the determinant of athleticism. Rather, consider each patient’s individual physiological, biomechanical and cognitive demands of their activity to better value how athletic they need to be.
Mrs Jones, my 75 year old patient, with a 5 year old knee replacement requires a relatively high level of athleticism to walk 6km daily. For many patients, there may be no competition to win, nor competitive season to provide a context to their activity. However, I’d argue the joy Mrs Jones feels from staying active and socialising while walking her two dogs is comparable to winning the district B Grade grand final.
I encourage you to spend a bit of time re-framing your patient’s activity into an athletic demand. Your patient may not view their daily walk as training, however this change in language will help you better structure their return to activity.
Once you have the goal of your return to play program, you can easily work backwards to develop a gradual progression.
Celebrate the victories.
If your patient completes the third 2km walk for the week, then this is a great moment to congratulate your athletic patient. I’ve had patients laugh at how happy I am for them, but as you are well aware – every patient has their own battles. Every win is worth acknowledging. Celebrating a win is important part of our work.
I enjoy working with athletes. All of my patients are athletes. The challenge is working out what their goal activity is. It’s then our privilege is to help them along the way.
A Sports Physio’s Toolkit.