I See This Mistake Over & Over

After working in private practice for almost a decade, there is one pattern that I see repeated time and time again.  Each time it does, the story sounds so familiar. It involves someone that has been in pain for a number of months or even years. They have seen physios, osteos, chiros (sometimes all three) but despite session after session, hours of dedication and hundreds of pounds, they are still suffering.

Without exception, people are coming to me looking for one thing. The treatment that is finally going to work. A technique or a fix that provides something that they haven’t yet been able to find - a solution.

However, the answer is not a new treatment. The answer always lies in the assessment. But the mistake I see made over and over again is people hunting for that magic bullet that solves their problem.

I’ve seen people that have had massage, injections, acupuncture, strengthening exercises, surgery after surgery all into one shoulder and the problem still didn’t go away. Do we think more treatment to this shoulder is going to help? Almost certainly not. So the question we have to answer is why. Why is the treatment not working? What is the root cause for the shoulder problem? The only way we can do that is by conducting a thorough assessment. No assessment can be thorough without looking at the entire body. 

The truth is, for almost every complex problem I’ve seen there has been a simple solution. It was just missed right at the start. If the root cause for an issue was overlooked and the treatment plan is focusing on the wrong area, then you can throw the kitchen sink at it but it is not going to fix the problem. 

Let me put it like this - We can agree that being injured and in pain is a place nobody wants to be. So let’s say we are going to drop a pin randomly on a map. That pin represents you. The goal is to get you back home. The treatment we use (massage, exercise etc) is our mode of travel. Using a bike, walking or car it doesn’t matter, they are all capable of getting you there. Our assessment is trying to figure out where you are and what route to take. The more details we collect before setting off, the more likely we are to get you back home. But if we spot a signpost, jump to conclusions and set off without thinking we could go in the wrong direction. Then it doesn’t matter what vehicle we use, we are never going to get there.