The real world

As we are all soon to graduate and start working in the real world I thought I’d blog about a situation that recently happened to me outside of prac relating to our physiotherapy experience.

I’m sure we’ve all had family and friends ask us to ‘have a look at this’, or ‘fix this for me’, or even the dreaded ‘oh so you’re a physio, so you’d be able to give me a massage’, but have any of us really seen any real life situations where our physiotherapy knowledge has helped us in the real world outside of prac?

I am currently on my paediatric placement and one of the common things that we see and treat is babies with plagiocephaly. Outside of studying I work in a small independent bottle shop. A lady walked in last week with a young baby in her arms. I commented on her baby and asked if he was roughly around 4-5 months old. She said ‘yes he is actually 4 and a half months old, do you have kids yourself?’

I found this slightly amusing, but explained to her that I don’t have kids, but the reason I had a good idea of her sons age was because I am a physiotherapy student and currently undertaking a paediatric clinical placement. She went on to ask what sort of conditions would paediatric physios treat. I couldn’t help but notice from across the counter that her son had quite a significant left sided plagiocephaly. I wasn’t quite sure what to say as I didn’t want to mention her son’s head as an example of what we see and treat and offend her.

So I played it cool and said that where I am working we mostly see children who are delayed in gross motor skills and so on. As the conversation went on I gathered the impression that she would actually appreciate the information if I mentioned her son’s head shape and not take any offence. So I went on to describe how we also treat plagiocephalies.

At that point I mentioned that her sons head is slightly asymmetrical and he actually has a mild left sided plagiocephaly. His mother seemed slightly surprised that she hadn’t noticed this, but I reassured her that often mothers don’t notice, it is usually the child health nurse or someone else who brings it to their attention. I went on to describe the condition and quickly assess the child and give the mother some information about what she could do to hopefully help with his head shape.

Meanwhile my boss at the liquor store didn’t mind me doing this and not working per se. He probably thought that engaging the customer like that would be good for business or something. Anyway I digress. The baby had FROM, good strength and the mother didn’t notice any preference to the left side. I gave her the same information that I would someone who I saw on prac in the same situation. I also made it clear that if she had any concerns or questions she should follow them up with the appropriate medical persons.

When I saw the child from across the counter, I felt almost obligated to at least mention to the mother what I had observed. In the end, I’m glad I did and said what I said. In the future when I am in a similar situation I wont feel hesitant to use my knowledge and skills to help others (but at the same time, I’m not going to go out deliberately prying into people looking for problems). Has anybody else been in a situation outside of prac where their physio knowledge made them notice something about someone that they felt obligated to mention to them?