1) Patient Education in Physical Therapy: Maximizing Treatment Effectiveness. Elizabeth Dean, PT, Ph.D., Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Education is a fundamental component of physical therapy treatment regardless of specialty on which its overall effectiveness depends. However, with increased work demands, attention to education is often resulting in a sub optimal treatment effect. This presentation first describes the role of education in physical therapy with patients and families. Second, assessments of the learning style, cognitive status, and language and literacy skills of the learner that are fundamental to effective education, are described. Third, communication skills and educational principles are presented that help to best inform our health care colleagues about physical therapy. Its scope of practice, and advances within the profession as new research is published. Physical therapists frequently complain that their scope of practice and role on the health care team are often misunderstood by other health care practitioners and politicians. In part, this reflects the need for physical therapists to improve their communication skills and effectively educate our colleagues and politicians about what it is that we do, and changes in practice as more research accumulates. In conclusion, physical therapists can enhance their overall treatment effectiveness, and thereby maximize their patient contact time, by incorporating principles of education and learning, in every treatment they administer. In addition, these skills are fundamental in informing patients, health care colleagues, politicians and the public about our essential role in health care. These skills are particularly important given health care reform in Kuwait aimed at reducing health care costs. Physical therapists are primarily non-invasive practitioners have an essential role in this reform.
2) Physical Therapy: A Primary Solution to Kuwait's Health Care Challenge. Elizabeth Dean, PT, Ph.D., Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Physical therapy is a profession whose practitioners focus primarily on the exploitation of non-invasive intervention and remediation of impairments and disabilities related to conditions affecting the following systems: musculoskeletal, neurological and cardiovascular/cardiorespiratory. The traditional biomedical model based on an acute interventionist approach has failed in the effective management of these conditions. An improved model of care is described in this presentation in which physical therapy has a primary role. A primary invasive interventionist approach cannot be supported. In this era of designer drugs and surgery, the role of the physical therapist has become even more important to ensure that non-invasive practices are exploited to the maximal extent primarily in the absence of medications and surgery wherever possible; or secondarily, in combination with them. A contemporary model of care in which the physical therapist works
shoulder-to-shoulder with the physician is described, and the specific skills needed by the physical therapist to assume an expanded scope of care are presented.