7:00 am and there I am – Physical Therapy again.
The well wishes I’ve received from all of you asking how my shoulder is doing has been, well, overwhelming !!!
I’m like Sheldon, working on my sarcasm.
While doing my arm bike routine to wake my shoulder up, I had a few thoughts.
See, here I am on the arm bike, I’m to do 3 minutes forward and then 3 minutes backwards. I always use the electronic monitoring gauges and try to match or beat my previous week’s distance.
Today I didn’t hit my 1.2 miles and only hit 1.0 miles – and it occurred to me, there needs to be some type of punishment/reward system in place at Physical Therapy.
Now, I don’t need an award.
In my athletic pursuits, awards never motivated me to perform.
What did motivate me to perform was in winning and not letting my coaches down.
There needs to be some way to award those that perform, and to maybe penalize those that are not giving their all.
So I suggested my idea to the staff there, and I was surprised to see that it caused some hesitation.
I can only assume that not every patron of Premier Physical Therapy in Milton is as stringent and disciplined as am I.
When given 3 sets of 10 with a 3 second hold, I do 3 sets of 10 with a 3 second hold.
But, I assume, that some (or perhaps many) might do 1 set of 10 and 2 sets of 9. Or, perhaps they do 3 sets of 10, but only hold some for a 2 second count.
Sometimes, depending on the exercise, I might have to take a break as it strains my injured shoulder, but I always give it my best shot to complete the required and assigned task
The physical terrorist I am assigned to, Kelly, often has other people she is running through their exercises and stretches, so I am not constantly monitored.
So it would be very easy for me to not complete the assigned task in the assigned manner.
But I don’t do that.
However – others might.
So I spoke about an idea to monitor their patients/clients to make sure they complete their assigned tasks and exercises.
When you sign in for your physical therapy appointment, you put on a …… wait for it …….. a shock collar.
Then as you go about your daily routine, if you do it incorrectly for any reason, your assigned physical therapist could just apply a shock to get you to better perform.
You know, positive outcome brought about by positive enforcement.
But Jim, what if, like you mentioned earlier, your assigned therapist is assisting another person?
Well, the corrective electric shock could be administered by any of the staff. Randon staffers can administer your shock from anywhere in the room.
You never know where it might come from.
And just the mere thought of a worker across the room, watching you, hand on the button, ready to throw and electric current through your body at any time …… jeez, the franchise rights alone are worth $millions.
Example: As I was doing my pull-downs, I was reminded to keep my shoulders down.
“Jim, shoulders down please”.
Sure, that might work fine for the normal physical therapy patron, but I like the aggressive assertive approach.
However, were I to have had on an electric shock collar, one quick jolt and I’d have realized I had done something wrong. And if my assigned terrorist Kelly had not noticed my shoulders not being in the proper position, any one of the alert cracker-jack staff could have applied the corrective measure.
Myself, I’ve always responded to the aggressive coaching approach, not the calmly stated and/or meditation approach.
I’d rather have my physical therapist say, “Yo – Jim, we talked about this, keep your damn shoulders down. Too difficult, suck it up buttercup!!!”
I think in the physical therapy field we, the patient/client, need a little more aggressiveness.
We need to be pushed harder.
We need to be pushed beyond our current comfort level.
And frankly – we deserve to be pushed harder.
And, professionally, you guys are the boss – you’re in charge.
You guys set the tone.
And if we, the patient/client fail to meet your standards, we should be held accountable.
As said, it was received with some hesitation.
And yes, I understand their concerns.
Example of a concern: One of my exercises is a “punch” where I lay on my back with my left arm extended straight out holding a 12.5 pound weight and I punch upwards, 3 sets of 10. Suppose I were not punching correctly or maybe I lost count (not likely, but perhaps) and on my 2nd set only did 9 and I received a shock to my electric collar, which I would deserve because the count was to be 10, not 9. It’s quite possible I could be startled by this sudden jolt and maybe drop the 12.5 pound metal weight on my face.
That would be bad.
So some responsibility would lie on the staff to properly administer the corrective measure in an appropriate manner.
I mean, after all, safety first.
Two more reasons why Electric Shock Monitoring may or may not work for every client.
- Lets face it – many clients that go to Physical Therapy might be a bit older and might have a pacemaker. This could cause problems. And if this happens when I am there, make no mistake, I’m pretty good at CPR. I’m not only certified, but in the certification test, I almost brought that dummy back to life.
- When receiving a jolt of electric current through your body, one might pee. So clean up could be an issue. Especially when at “Premiere Physical Therapy and Sports Performance” in Milton, DE they have carpeting. So if you get shocked and you pee, YOU are responsible for the clean up, or for the cost of clean up, because face it, you have only yourself to blame.
But, as physical therapists, aren’t they there to push their patients/clients to their individual limits so they/we improve?
And the physical terrorist also must be disciplined. If they shock someone wrongly, then they too could have a penalty of being shocked by the patient/client they wrongly shocked.
Now that might have to go through a lengthy appeal process. I’ve yet to work out all the details to my idea.
I expected the staff to fully embrace my plan. I fully expected them to feel it would reflect positively on their patients/clients recovery schedules.
With my plan, there could be 2 groups of patients/clients. A focus group would receive the shock collars and another group would go without, you know, regular boring physical therapy treatments. And over a 6-week or 8-week period, they’d test the persons and monitor their progress to see which group performed better.
See, it’s not about “getting” the electric shock, it’s about the fear that you MIGHT get the electric shock if you don’t perform.
There would, of course, need to have some procedures in place.
Suppose two staff members notice an exercise infraction and they both administer a shock. Would that patient/client get a double shock?
More and more details.
See, I am a details person.
Safety first, and, details second.
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