Hey guys, do you want to know how i got into the physiotherapy profession? Read on.
My physical culture background was artistic gymnastics and martial arts, which i picked up in my school days. Of course, our sports teams do not have strength & conditioning coaches or rehab therapists. We just trained the way our seniors taught us to. If we were injured, we just took a few days off and continued training after that.
So i suffered numerous ankle sprains in my school days.
In the Army, i had five ankle sprains in my Basic Military Training (BMT). So that means one every two weeks. I was always with the pai kah pai chiu (Hokkien for injured arms and legs) gang. What the heck was going on? I wanted to do my best and become an officer. Looks like i can't make it if this happens all the time. Later i realised it is because of my previous injuries that i had unstable ankles.
Then i heard that some people who had back pain went for physiotherapy. And they are people who give them exercises for injuries.
Damn SAF, why didn't they recommend me for physiotherapy? Seeing i have had so many ankle sprains in such a short period of time.
So i decided to check it out. Went for specialist at Singapore General Hospital and asked for physiotherapy.
So i went for my first session. I was given stretches and some strengthening exercises to do (how effective these exercises are is another story). But most of the time there, the physiotherapist was running around checking on the other patients she had.
On top of that, although the appointment card said 3pm (insert an arbitrary time here), the training session never starts on time. It is likely to be 330pm.
So it is queueing, plus more queueing, plus only fifteen minutes of the physio's time out of the two plus hours spent at the hospital.
These are some figures which you may be interested to know:
-A typical hospital physio does about twenty patients a day.
-The average working day is 8 hours.
-So that makes 24 minutes per patient. But realistically it is likely to be less than this.
With multiple patients at the same time, for the whole day, day after day, what do you think is going to happen to quality? Even teaching a person Intu-Flow joint mobility takes more than half an hour with teaching and explanations. You can technically go through the motion without teaching and explanations, but you won't get the patient convinced in the methods.
And not forgetting that people have the mindset of "i'll do these exercises if i have the time", or "i'll try to do them".
How much do you think you can learn from the hospital?
Why do they have so many patients a day? Are they greedy for more money? Or are they really concerned about people? If they are really concerned about people, why not have more physios so that every patient have at least an hour with the physio?
No doubt the service is cheap, but cheap is usually not a good option. You pay more in terms of:
-Queueing for an appointment
-Queueing at the counter
-Learning less
-Longer recovery period
If you are a sedentary person, probably going to the hospital physio is not a big deal. After all you don't really care about the injury so much.
But if you are a high performance athlete, it matters much. Time wasted is training wasted. Training wasted is gold medal wasted.
That's why i keep telling people not to go to hospital physios but get a private one (like me). With private physio, the whole one hour can be dedicated to the one patient. To ensure that the patient is learning everything he needs to know to get to his path of recovery.
And even if you have an hour with every patient, there are some patients who are going to take time to learn, i.e. that one hour session may not be enough.
Besides that i am the product of my own products. I was also full of injuries and rehabbed and trained myself to high performance. I would only sell products that i myself use. How many hospital physios are there just for the job? Be realistic my friend, not every one out there has a passion for human movement. Many can't even perform a proper squat or deadlift. Some don't even know what is a deadlift. Let alone teach your proper movement.
And if you have been my client before, you would know that i touch people as little as possible and teach you what you should do instead of doing things for you. Even myofascial release i let the client and foam roller (and related equipment) do their job, not my hands.
My job is to do as little as possible and let the client do as much as possible so that they can be independent. Dependency on the therapist can cost a lot more money than if you can do it yourself.
Healing doesn't come from me or my hands. Healing comes from knowledge and the application of it. And you apply that knowledge by your own personal practice - by practicing and refining your movement.
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