This post isn’t really about football…How does our choice of language effect our patients?
Another bad week for the home team. Words cannot describe how bad the Buffalo Bills played this past weekend.
I spend a fair amount of time on the internet. I rationalize it by telling myself that it is part of my job; keeping up with myofascial release and the larger field of therapy in general takes time. As a result, I read a great deal of information written by physical, occupational, and massage therapists. The one thing that strikes me is the language that we use.
I know that my vocabulary has become filled with words and phrases that were taught to me in my MFR training. Entire beliefs that were related to me as fact come pouring from my mouth when speaking to clients or writing on the internet. Occasionally I try to step back from this and listen to what I am saying. Are the statements that I make truthful? Can they be supported as fact?
The therapy world is full of ideas as to how the body works, and I am not just speaking about the “alternative” community. Spend a while searching through therapy forum sites and you will come across all different kinds of language and thought, much of which is fabrication based on hypotheses. I was fed these hypotheses, presented as fact. While some of the teachings were current and scientifically valid, much was taught was based on outdated views and outdated research. I frequently read the equivalent words and views from many others.
“What’s the harm”, you might ask? If the therapy I do works, who cares about the validity of what I am saying?
Maybe no harm is done. But, is this how you wish to represent yourself?
The research page of my website has become a labor of love. Through it I’ve found science that both validates my work as well as repudiates it. With the positives, I’ve found honor in speaking truthfully. With the negatives, I’ve created correction back to a more honest way of viewing and speaking of my work.
Examples of speaking half truths, or theories reinforced in school/training, are rampant in many of us. Some are so commonly repeated that we have no idea of their invalidity. Most have become urban legends of the body work community.
How do you view the language that you use? Have you stepped back from it to ask if it is true?
The Bills…there is always next week, though if I am truthful, they are already finished.
Walt Fritz, PT
(Watch for my new website due out in a few days)
It’s so refreshing to hear someone admit their work might be based on theory instead of boasting that they have the truth all mankind has been looking for. To hear some people talk, it sounds like they believe they have the answer to world peace. (Sometimes it’s actually on their bumper sticker.) I’m also frustrated with classes and seminars that present information as fact without the research to back it up. I look around in wonder as people blindly follow the blind. But what the heck. They’re happy.
Dubious information should be presented with a disclaimer, so patients, students, etc. can be sufficiently informed to be able to make their own decisions. Very little of what any of us do each day could stand up to a rigid standards of science. What is important is that we don’t behave like they do.
Well, what a fabulous piece. I’ve not read anything for a long time that gave me such a satisfied feeling. Nice one Mr Fritz. The word ‘true’ is close to my heart.
‘Truth’ could be a spoken accuracy – a best attempt at reporting ‘what actually happened/is happening’, or it could be an accuracy of view around ‘how things operate’. The latter is very pertinent to the training of those who are destined to apply their training to a result-based endeavour – medicine, therapy, or domestic electrical engineering for example. I suspect that in a DEE training establishment, or training hospital, the made-up tales and personal mythologies are fewer than in bodywork therapy school. The risks would be just too great!
Things operate. They do. A cut heals. Or not. But things do themselves whether or not a human is attempting to cognitively understand the process, and create a model to transmit to others.
It would be interesting to have one day a week where I don’t speak in the treatment room. Just to see whether my hands understand how thing operate without any contribution from my mouth.
I’m glad that I have the freedom to try things, with no peer reviewing over my shoulder. I am also aware it could turn me into a deluded megalomaniac. I recently wrote a book, self-published. Self-publishing is like a license to spout bullshit. I had to be very awake during the writing process to the possibility of getting carried away with my own home-grown philosophies. On the other hand I needed to have confidence that I was commenting on a personal process that I had found helpful in my own life, and that others might like to read about my experiences.
The mystery and reality of ‘how things actually operate’ is in the middle of a diamond. Observers and commentators on such a mystery can only view through one facet at a time. They all marvel at what it is in the middle of the diamond that so entrances, and see vaguely the eyes of others looking through different facets on the other side. They may even choose to go around the other side and look through the facet with another – try that on for size – see how it feels to look through the eyes of another. I think that’s a good idea. Only by actually entering the diamond and becoming the diamond can the Truth – ‘how things actually operate’ – be felt.
Is this possible. I dunno. Is the above true? Of course not. Just an opinion. Did it touch you? Was it worth it? I liked it. Gave me the shivers. Just talking to myself again.
Phil,
Great points. Writing your book allowed you to veer off into your explore your own philosophies. In the treatment room is where I ask myself if I am being “true”.
The diamond analogy you presented is quite apt; stepping back and looking in from another angle. That angle may not produce a perfect replication of what I believe, and it will hopefully allow me to veer off into a corrected direction of explanation. How things operate will always have differing viewpoints; that is the nature of science. I believe it is our role to be aware of those differing viewpoints and to make our patients aware that what we say to them is simply an opinion.