Rapport...

On my current prac I am treating a patient who seemed very shy at first and difficult to extract information from in both subjective and objective examination. Over the subsequent treatments, she became more and more talkative, until last week, when a simple question seemed to open the floodgates, so to speak. All of a sudden, she was telling me things about her life that I was not expecting, and I was shocked at what I was hearing. No wonder she came across shy to begin with! Patients can become very comfortable with us as physiotherapists and we need to be very aware of this. Some patients often just need to get things off their chest, and in our profession, we are often the ones to hear it. The main things I have taken away from this experience is not only how important therapist-patient confidentiality is, but also how important it is for us as professionals to have coping mechanisms and referral options when cases such as this arise. Patients may tell us very private things if they feel comfortable with us, and we need to ensure that we have ways to debrief, or refer the patient on for appropriate counselling etc if appropriate. If we take on board all of what a patient tells us it can be quite emotionally distressing, and can be a trigger for professional burnout. Therefore we need to be able to cope, and not put our health at risk for the sake of the patient.