Healthcare Is A Team Sport- And You Are The Captain.

The Olympics is just around the corner! Although it’s going to look vastly different this year with the Covid-19 Pandemic, we are going to witness the pinnacle of human athleticism as individuals with their different roles work together to achieve something amazing.

There are a lot of similarities in team sport and healthcare. There are generally people with different positions (roles), there’s usually a clear goal (or should be), they are all working together to achieve something and they are all working really hard to get there.

 The old approach to healthcare, where you have your GP in one location, physiotherapist in another, dietician somewhere else and specialist elsewhere again does not work. No one person knows everything about the body and all it’s intricacies and we shouldn’t expect them to. This leads to poor outcomes, loss of communication between professionals and you the patient receive conflicting information on what are the next steps forwards.

 In this modern age patient knowledge of their conditions with the thanks to the internet is much better. You expect a good experience and care that reflects your preferences.

 And so you should!

 The World Health Organisation also agrees with you. They have stated that “engaging the patient as a team member can improve the safety and quality of their care.” This shared decision model is designed to put the patient in the driver’s seat and put you back in control of your condition.

As a member of your team my role has a few parts. The first is to provide you the information you need in a way that you understand to make good decisions you are comfortable with. The second is to provide you the best in physiotherapy to give you the best chance of you getting better. Finally and in some ways the most important is to help equip you with the right skills so you can ask the right questions of your team to get you moving forwards.

The 4 Questions we recommend you ask of anyone in your team are:

1.    What is my main problem?

2.    What do I have to do?

3.    Why is it important for me to do this?

4.    What happens if we do nothing?

 This whole process works a lot easier if all your services are in the same place. Let’s use knee pain for example. You see your GP who sends you to a physio. You walk across the hallway, have a session with your physio who will provide you with an exercise plan. The physio can then talk to your GP straight away to keep them in the loop. Because of the knee pain, balance may be an issue, or you might need to lose some weight to help with the knee. So you can then talk to the exercise physiologist or dietician to help you with that part. Or maybe it’s the back or hips that start playing up a little, that’s ok because you can speak to the chiro in the next room to get the best approach on that too.

 Whilst all this is happening. All these clinicians are talking to each other and you to help come up with a plan based on what’s important and reflecting on your preferences, lifestyle and experiences.

 Because at the end of the day your health matters and you deserve to make that captain’s call.