Flexibility: not just movement variability

For many therapists, learning the Right Way to treat a person experiencing pain means following rules. Observe this, identify that, follow the yellow brick road and end up with the right result. The problem is that people don’t always respond in the way the rules suggest meaning both clinician and patient can be confused about what to do next. While it’s normal to generate clinical heuristics, or rules of thumb, these can limit the way we approach helping someone. I’ve been pondering this as I’m reading Villatte, Viullatte and Hayes Mastering the clinical conversation: Language as intervention. I posted last time I wrote about the problems that language can pose for us as we attend to the concepts and relationships those word generate for us rather than noticing what is actually happening right here and now. I was originally thinking of the people we work with and treat, but now I want to turn my attention to us – because we too can be imprisoned within rules that function well in one context – but hamper flexible responses in other contexts. The rules we follow Some of the rules we learn during our initial clinical training can be very helpful – for example, we learn that we need to attend to what people say and do; we learn to suppress our judgements about the person as “likeable” or “unlikable” (hopefully); we learn the importance of using correct terminology with one another. Other rules are far less helpfu...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: ACT - Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Clinical reasoning Coping strategies Pain Professional topics Science in practice flexibility Health healthcare Research Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs