DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Monday 13 December 3:30-5:30pm

Thursday 16 December 1:30-5:30pm

Friday 17 December 1:30-5:30pm

Hours this week: 10 hours

Accumulated Hours: 72

 

Occupational hand therapy requires not only medical/biological knowledge and skills but also social skills as therapy deals solely with patients. Different patients have different levels of pain tolerance, devotion, and thoughts on what is most effective. For example, treating a tendonitis case is common and follows a specific rest then strengthen period of time. However, because the patent puts her tryout as her number one priority and refuses to rest, Nicole is forced to create a program that copes with the patient’s demands. Patients have different pain tolerance levels which goes along with their specific program. For example, a patient with a low pain tolerance cannot take long periods of stretching and is generally too paranoid to involve stretching in their home program forcing Nicole to perform all exercises on the patient herself without being able to depend on that extra work done by the patient at home. It goes both ways however; a patient who has a high pain tolerance and demand to heal at a fast rate can sometimes overdo therapy and injure the region even more. Here at Physiotherapy the therapists call this the
push forward/ hold back” factor. Based on personalities of different patients, therapists have to coordinate therapy programs to cope with each specific patient. Some people need to be “pushed forward” to receive more effective results from rehabilitation, and some need to be “held back” in order to avoid overuse and the potential of causing damage.

  I remember when I was in therapy I was a “push forward” patient because I was extremely unwilling to do exercises and work on building muscles. Thus, my therapist pushed me harder in sessions to make up for my lack of exercise in my home program. However, when my mother was in therapy for her back she refused to slow down with activity causing her pain. Here the therapist limited her activity and focused more on healing/reducing pain in therapy sessions rather than working on strengthening as she was already overdoing that outside of therapy  on her own.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.