Lacking confidence that you have found the right diagnosis is not great…

Because if you are unsure what the patient’s problem is, it is almost impossible to plan and prescribe the right treatment techniques and rehab exercises.

You know what I mean…

Those patients you have seen {{ subscriber.first_name }}, where you use different hands-on treatment techniques, which improve patient symptoms in the clinic room, but symptoms seem to come back as soon as they leave the clinic room…

Or those patients you have prescribe rehab for, but question yourself if your are on the right track and if you are even rehabbing the right patient problems.

Beyond the initial assessment, you should only be checking in with a 1-3 key markers (both subjective and objective) to see how your patient or athlete is progressing.

If you are still asking subjective questions or conducting objective assessment tests beyond that first session then something went wrong.

This happens all the time with inexperienced therapists mainly because you put too much pressure on yourself and in most cases overcomplicate your subjective and objective assessments.

Here’s 3 simple things you can do to help you make sense of your patient assessments to give you the confidence in what you are doing…

And help you nail the right patient diagnosis.

#1 Know What You Are Going To Do BEFORE Your Patient Walks In 

If you have a clear structure to both your subjective and objective assessments you have the best chance of finding the right diagnosis.

If you feel like your assessments differ for pretty much every patient you see, then you are making things much harder for yourself.

Whilst clearly there will be some individual difference in your assessments i.e. special tests for a knee versus a shoulder injury…

95% of what you do in every patient assessment, regardless of the injury, severity or irritability, should be the same. 

Being clear with the questions you are going to ask (subjective) and the tests you are going to do (objective) is a must if you want to find the right patient diagnosis.

#2 Keep To The Plan

Even if you think you might know what is going on, don’t skip steps.

Stick to the plan and work through your subjective and objective assessments in a set order, to make sure you do not miss anything important.

The worse thing you can do is rush through the assessment…

Then find you get to the end and you are not quite sure what is going on…

Having then to go back over many of the questions or tests you should have already asked or completed.

This is a one-way ticket to confusion and an inaccurate patient diagnosis.

#3 If Something Does Not Make Sense…Do It Again

Usually if something does not make clinical sense…it does not make clinical sense.

99/100 patient problems will make sense.

The 1/100 are those red flag patients that have sinister symptoms that need urgent onward referral.

We know how muscles, nerves, tendons, joints and ligaments act…

We know how different positions, mechanisms of injury cause specific symptoms…

We know how these structures respond and approximate healing times for individual injuries.

So if your patient or athlete presents in a way that does not make sense, you need to delve deeper.

You might need to ask your patient one or more of your subjective questions again in a different way…

Because maybe they didn’t understand or they misinterpreted the question.

You might need to repeat some of your objective assessment tests to help you make sense of what problems you patient actually has…

Rather than just guessing and prescribing exercises, hoping they work…

But in reality you have no idea if they will.

These 3 things can make a massive difference to your patient assessments and give you the confidence you need to take a patient through a full subjective and objective assessment…

Ensuring you do not miss any important information that is crucial to helping you identify the right patient diagnosis.

Hope this helps.

Andy

The New Grad Physio Mentor

PS. If you want to really learn how to nail your patient assessments then get in touch here. [www.newgradphysio.com/membership]

The subjective and objective assessment are two of the three first modules that members of my New Grad Physio Membership go through when they first join (the other module shows you how to design and implement a rehab plan for any patient, with any injury).

If you know how to conduct a proper assessment and can extract all the important information to make an accurate diagnosis…

Then know how to plan and execute a proper rehab plan…

Then this is all you need to get great result with 9/10 patients that you see.

If you want to see if you are suitable for my membership then head here [www.newgradphysio.com/membership] and find out right now.