I saw a question posted the other day to the limb loss/difference community on whether they would rather have unlimited prosthetic upgrades or unlimited physical therapy.
The answer was overwhelmingly prosthetic upgrades, which was my answer too. That stuff is crazy expensive, and a physical therapist's services are pretty cheap in the healthcare world. For some perspective, a transfemoral prosthesis with a microprocessor knee can easily surpass $50k. Yes, as much as a very nice car. And I don't think the prosthesis comes with a 100k mile warranty.
How many visits with a PT can you get for $50k? Well let's say your cash rate is conservatively $100/hr, so that's 500 visits. Which equates to pretty much a 1 hr PT session 3x a week for over 3 years, 2x a week for almost 5 years, and 1x a week for almost 10 years. You get the point.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up was because of the reasoning behind a lot of the answers.
And I quote...
“I personally hate PT.”
“I can't think of a reason PT would help me.”
“I can Google what to do with PT.”
“I already have unlimited physical therapy. It's called the gym and the golf course.”
And there were also multiple versions of, “I never even had PT.”
That's the part that sucks to read.
Not because my feelings are hurt as a physical therapist. Well kind of, but that doesn't really matter. People are allowed to dislike working with a PT. I've had patients who didn't particularly want my help either. That's going to happen.
But there are a few things here I think we need to pay attention to.
First, working with a physical therapist and exercising are not the same thing.
Yes, we use exercise and movement as interventions all the time. But if our value can be replaced by Googling a few exercises and getting a gym membership, then what exactly are we doing?
Second, someone loses a limb and never works with a physical therapist at all?
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either.
Not everybody needs months and months of care, but there are a lot of pretty significant physical, functional, and prosthetic changes happening after limb loss. There should at least be an opportunity for somebody to work with a clinician who understands those things.
And if someone wants our help, needs our help, and seeks us out for help, they shouldn't walk away feeling like we had nothing valuable to offer them.
Because every one of those experiences travels farther than that one patient.
A good experience might mean they recommend a PT to another person with limb loss, tell their prosthetist how helpful their therapist was, or seek us out again when something changes.
A bad experience can do the exact opposite. Multiply that by every patient interaction happening across the country, and that bad experience gets generalized to our entire profession.
We're in the last few days of National Physical Therapy Month, so I guess that's my little rallying cry.
The way people perceive our value directly affects how many people we actually get the opportunity to help.
So maybe the question isn't whether patients value physical therapy.
Maybe we need to make damn sure we're giving them something worth valuing.