Rewards

Although you may be tempted to buy your staff pizza when they get stressed; gift cards when they go the extra mile; prizes for this or that.  I would challenge you to think differently and create an atmosphere in your team of having each other's backs.  An atmosphere where one team member is thanking their peer for taking up their slack.  Thank your employee and be sincere - some of the things my employees do for each other AMAZES me and I let them know that it amazed me.  I do everything I can do everyday to make my employee's work lives easier and each employee knows that I will work just as hard as they do and I'll do anything I can for them.  This sets the example that they then carry out with each other.  An atmosphere of "service".  Service for our customers and service to each other.  Instead of worrying about what everyone can do for them...they focus on what they can do for everyone around them and we all win.  Team stressed?  Instead of buying them pizza or something else lame...figure out why their stressed and fix it as fast as possible.  When they know you actually and sincerely care - that's when you're team will come together.

Documentation

So much of our therapist's time is spend doing documentation and unfortunately much of it is of poor quality.  Teach your therapists the difference between a goal and a functional objective.  A goal might read something like "Patient will demonstrate 3+ strength in bilateral upper extremities" and the intermediary will say "So??"  A goal that reads something like "Patient will propel self to diningroom and other locations within 150 ft radius of her room 80% of opportunities" would be a functional objective.  This type of goal matters to the patient and to the reviewer because it will make a huge impact on the patient's quality of life and ability to live more independently.  I'll be discussing more topics surrounding documentation in upcoming posts.

Refusals

Often therapists try educational approaches and ultimately try sending in the business office or administrator to reason with a patient that is refusing. Most of the time refusals are a symptom of executive dysfunctions and should be handled by an OTR or SLP. A therapist must establish rapport before treating a patient with early Dementia or executive dysfunctions. This time of establishing rapport can be documented as "Skilled graded approach to engage patient participation in full therapy plan of treatment". Another goal might read as "Patient will participate in environmental engagement activities 80% of opportunities indep". Those activities that you use to establish rapport can include something as simple as getting the patient his/her favorite soda or something else that is important to the patient. Sometimes you can interact with someone else at the patient's meal table to demonstrate you are trustworthy. Another way is to join him/her at activities and allow the patient to teach you how to do it. Allowing the patient to be the expert in one area, will go a long way to build trust so the patient will be willing to allow you to be the expert in another area. It's about building trust.

Introduction

I am a Speech-Language Pathologist with over 20 years of experience. I work for an amazing company; Transitions Rehab as a Clinical Educator. I have worked in nearly every facet of the Sub-Acute Rehab world and still learning something new everyday. I've worked all over the country and the therapy world is smaller than you might think. We all have similar frustrations, but fortunately we all have different strengths which we can share to make our careers more successful and less challenging.