Too many cooks…

You know the saying, right?

But how does this apply to Sports Therapy?

Sometimes you can have too many practitioners giving their opinion regarding the athletes injury (which may all be different). In some cases this could be complicated by imaging and further analysis and medical opinion.

There have been multiple studies that have demonstrated how imaging may add more difficulty to providing a pathway for the patient, as findings may or may not be linked to the cause of the patients symptoms, specifically if the symptoms are from insidious onset.

So what is the opposite of having too many cooks?

A large percentage of Sports Therapists work as self-employed practitioners. Often working in their own clinical practices, or solely with patients without input from a multidisciplinary team. This can be isolating.

So what do they do when the patient isn’t responding to treatment?

It can be a particularly difficult part of being a practitioner because we have our biases for treatment, and sometimes we may have missed an aspect of subjective assessment that could have provided more information for our clinical impression.

If working on our own, then we also only have access to our own knowledge. We could be missing the skills held by other practitioners or not having the experience of working with an athlete with a specific pathology.

So what can the solution be?

I would strongly encourage you to build a network around yourself which may consist of other Sports Therapists, as well as practitioners from the multidisciplinary team including sports medicine doctors, scientists, strength and conditioning coaches, physiotherapists, sports rehabilitators.

If you are a Sports Therapists and you would love the support of other practitioners who you could meet on a regular basis to discuss case studies, research, clinic business or professional development then check out the THRIVE programme.

This provides the exactly solution that you are looking for.