skills which can easily “fit” into your scope of practice as well as other injury management tools like stretching and strengthening - again, up to the level of your professional ability. When you know something is very effective, an authority comes out in your voice when you communicate with your patients. This authority is a vital part in inspiring your patients to take action and contribute to their welfare. When you are exposed to different techniques, from the perspective of a patient, you develop a better understanding of how your patients will react to these same interventions.

It allows you to be exposed to and develop new “effective interaction with people” competencies Examine the way others work in their clinical environment. What do you really like about their clinical behavior? Can you adopt these methods in your own clinic? How do they interact with their patients and conduct their assessment and decision-making processes? What behaviors do you think are not effective in a clinical environment? Does this reinforce to you what not to do?

It allows you to be exposed to and develop new organisational strategies

Examine their processes from initial phone booking, appointment book organisation, methods of collecting payment, and their rebooking strategy. Don’t be intrusive, only look at their process when invited. Do you think their clinic “set-up” is effective, inviting, and clean? This process of analysing what they do well and replicating the good components within your own practice while being aware of what doesn’t work and discarding the bad is simply called behavior modeling.

It allows you to function at your best When you have your own restrictions/pains/strength limitations and issues identified, treated, and managed, you will be more happy and motivated and you will have a higher level of work satisfaction. Having your physical limitations treated and resolved is the ideal way to live and work. Let’s look at an example, let’s say you have pain from a wrist joint (Problem 1) and you decide not to have it treated. You begin to compensate in your work to avoid making the situation worse for that wrist. Your other wrist may start to hurt (Problem 2) due to overload. Now, let’s say something else occurs and you develop supraspinatus tendinopathy (Problem 3). By this point of time, you may well be beginning to get overwhelmed by the nature of your problems. If you had acted quickly and resolved these issues as they occurred, then this negative cascade of events would never have happened.

It allows you to develop personal relationships with other practitioners This is one of the key points here in relation to your rapid practice development. You need to find out who are the standout people in your area in the broad physical therapy industry. Go and see them as a patient. Not only will you receive many of the benefits discussed above, but you will be able to develop a relationship with these key people in a situation where they are treating you with their full focus. Over time, during discussion about your condition or the industry in general, you will be able to gain valuable advice.

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LIMITATIONS AND ISSUES IDENTIFIED, TREATED, AND MANAGED, YOU WILL BE MORE HAPPY AND MOTIVATED AND YOU WILL HAVE A HIGHER LEVEL OF WORK SATISFACTION.

You will also have the opportunity to share with them your knowledge and begin to develop a mutual respect. We work in a largely self-employed health industry. More jobs are offered to people directly rather than the traditional application and interview method. These good practitioners are simply too busy to go down these time-consuming routes. You want to create a situation where a number of people know you are “in practice” and have developed a high level of respect for you so that when a position becomes available for a massage therapist in their practice or in one of their associates’ practices, your name immediately comes up as a suitable practitioner.

It allows you to develop a style of practice - your style We all like to give treatments that we know we would like to receive ourselves. What feels great to you as a receiver should be well noted by you. It allows you to be become a more highly receptive practitioner to the needs of others [H2] When you have treatment at different times and under different circumstances, you will realise that you will need to be treated differently in different situations. You will know from experience how important this is. When a patient tells you that a body area that you are

working on feels bruised and highly sensitive, you are more likely to understand what that feels like and you will reduce your treatment pressure accordingly. Your experience from being treated when you have

delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) after an unusually long or unaccustomed bout of exercise will clearly show you how much more sensitive you need to be when treating athletes in the same situation.

The eBook costs £21. For more information or to purchase the eBook visit http://bit.ly/MassageSurvivalGuide

THE AUTHOR

Robert Granter has 23 years experience in soft tissue therapy within the Australian Sports Medicine Multidisciplinary Model. He was head of massage therapy for the Australian Olympic team at both Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000. He has presented widely within Australia, the UK, and New Zealand and was a contributor to the textbook Clinical Sports Medicine by Dr. P. Brukner and Dr. K. Khan, which is now in its 3rd revised edition and has sold over 40,000 copies worldwide. He is co-founder of the Australasian College of Soft Tissue Therapy and is on the editorial board of the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

TH R

within the H

team at both sportEX dynamics 2010;25(Jul):21-22

WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR OWN RESTRICTIONS/PAINS/STRENGTH