Trust in treating Therapist

What makes you trust your Physical Therapist?  If your Physical Therapist can't treat you during your desired treatment time, what do you do?  Who do you trust to "tag-team" your care?  Should you "tag-team"?  What about "co-treats"?  How does that differ? 

Let's face it, physical therapy is about relationship.  Patients typically come in to see us at least once a week.  We typically treat that patient independently, at Great Moves, for 1 hour at a time.  We're going to get to know our patients.  Trust is (hopefully) built between the PT and the patient.  Also, independent patient goals are established.  Patients work with us knowing we have their best interest in mind; to return them to what their personal desires are.

"Consistency of Provider" has been a big topic of late.  Not all practitioners, in any field, are alike.  I hear complaints about patients not being able to get on their primary PT's schedule in the corporate system because other physical therapists' patients are taking those slots.  What would you do?  Speaking with a former intern of mine in this situation, I recommended (and she had already started this process) of having her patients schedule out their appointments.  I always tell my patients it is easier to cancel (preferably with 24 hour notice) than it is to slide in an appointment (although, I am also a clinician that has the mindset "I will make it happen" when having to squeeze in a patient).  When "tag-teaming" patients (sharing a patient between practitioners), this brings up another point -- hire the right people; quality counts!  It is easy to co-treat (treat a patient at the same time together) and talk up that other practitioners' skills while you are both there doing the treatment on the patient.  Then, when the patient is ready to see both practitioners for his/her own specialty, it is a more comfortable and easy transition to being scheduled on 1 PT's schedule 1 day and on another PT's schedule a different day.  Having this relationship of respect for each PT's specialty can go a long ways in your practice when a specific PT gets sick or goes on vacation and patients still need to be seen. 

Bottom line: All patients need to feel taken care of, valued, and given the best care possible.  He/She can have a primary PT for different aspects of his/her care.  A patient needs to be well educated on these specialties being provided to him/her.

What are your thoughts on "Consistency of Provider"?

Value

A hot topic of late is physical therapy and value.  What is value to you?  When I think of value, I think about "my brand".  I pride myself on providing quality hands on care and personally guided, individualized exercise instruction to maximize the quality of life of orthopedic patients.  From that, I can extrapolate, that value, to me, includes education (fellowship training in manual orthopedic physical therapy), experience (sharing of various core stabilization exercises I have compiled over my years of being a PT), and "something extra" (making those exercises fit the individual whether it be an abundant supply of exercises for the exercise addict or functional movements for the desk jockey) to meet the goals of our patients.  For my non-PT readers, how do you provide value to society?  Does society know the value of the service we provide?