Hone Those Skills for Free

Any serious therapist who has invested in quality training and is looking to maximise their career potential is likely to want to continue honing their skills. I mean who wants to get caught out by a client who is presenting a complaint that you can’t interpret or don’t understand?

“My physio says that I have thoracic outlet syndrome so if you could just pay that some attention please”

Could be embarrassing...

In another blog I mentioned the oft neglected value that your anatomy and physiology e-course provides. Packed with info that might have deserted you just after the exam (hey come on, we all cram for tests and that tends to hit the short term memory only to get flushed out on a wave of relief that the stress is over!) it is a treasure trove of good stuff. Remember you can purchase an extension any time. Even years after your original purchase. 

While the e-course will hopefully feel like reacquainting yourself with an old friend, revising origins and insertions from a reference book comes in at the dry end of the learning scale for me (although I do try!) I have found a better way to improve your skill base is to prepare a favourites folder of good research sites on your computer. As a massage therapist I often pick a sport, Google “common injuries ” and start reading. Usually you find examples of injuries treated by other practitioners or maybe practises that specialise in treating any injury related to that sport. Within those pages you will likely find someone talking about the mechanics of a joint that is commonly affected by the sport, or the complexity of a movement pattern usually encountered (including what this does to the biomechanical chain.) This helps you to picture muscle actions and can help put some of your prior learning into full context.

I am sure whatever the therapy you studied anatomy and physiology for, the same will be true.

Golf is a good example of a sport that has a complex repetitive motion and can generate some peculiar conditions, from unequal length rhomboids to sub-acromial impingements (and of course the ubiquitous “golfers elbow”.) Any anatomical terms used in an article that you don’t understand are then the basis of your next search and on it goes. You will soon start to find reliable sources of info and have a handy reference library. I should of course point out that you need to be wary of some sources of information, the internet being infamous for its inaccuracies. But common sense should guide you towards credible authors.

I have found that the more I learn about the therapy business the more I want to learn and I know I'm not alone. I love doing courses and I keep my CPD points up and there is always a new question that arises and I love researching it. You'd have been hard pushed to convince me when I was at school but it turns out that research can be fun! Who knew!

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