In the physical therapy profession, I feel that technology should take a supplementary role, although I do think that over time it will become more prominent. I think that the most important thing about physical therapy is that it is very hands-on. Using technology for E-stim, for example, helps a lot, but it is not the main source of rehabilitation. Therefore, I think that technology should be used to supplement the normal manual activities that take place in the rehabilitation setting.
After doing the video assignment for class, I have realized that video can be a really effective way to help patients in the physical therapy setting. For this assignment, my partner and I performed several stretches that can help a patient with knee rehabilitation. Doing something like this video for different injuries could be really helpful. The patients can either bring home the tapes of the exercises, or I could even upload them to a website and the patients could find the videos through the website. This could help a lot especially for older patients, who may have a hard time remembering the exercises that they are supposed to do at home.
I think that I would use video and computer technologies the most, as I explained previously, to show patients the exercises that will help them recover from an injury. I do not think that technologies such as PowerPoint would be that useful to me, unless they included videos or pictures of the exercises the patients should be doing. Overall, I would choose technologies that don't make my job pointless. I think that having technologies that do all of my work for me would make me feel like I was not doing enough to help the patient. Because of this, I would only use technology that my patients either use to help them remember exercises, or use on their free time.
The following link is a video about a video game that is being used in physical therapy to help Parkinson's patients with balance. This is a really interesting topic, especially because, as in the link below, the video games can actually provide feedback to the patients and inform them of their improvement. As I said before, I think that technology should be mostly supplemental to the physical therapy process, so I would not choose to replace this technology with other exercises, but it could be something that the patients could do at home on their own time, if they choose. Here is the link to find out more: http://www.happynews.com/news/6282010/health-tech-video-games-used-pt.htm
I agree that technology is best used when it is supplemented. "Overall, I would choose technologies that don't make my job pointless." In a field where it is important to be hands on with the patient, this is a very good point. I also think that using video is a good way to show patients what they should be doing on their own to recover. I remember getting a handout listing stretches I could do for my sprained ankle and I think it would have been helpful to have a video to see exactly how to do it.
ReplyDeleteUsing video is a great way to have patients remember their exercises and stretches. I agree that you don't want to have too much technology going on in the office cause otherwise what is the point in being there to help if machines can do it for them. My past experiences seeing a physical therapist have always been more hands on than machine based which helps you build trust in the physical therapists knowledge of what they are doing.
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