Have you done any safeguarding training?

Posted by Mint

Some people suggest that the patient group that visits private osteopaths are not likely to have any safeguarding issues. I personally don’t think we should judge in this way. Do vulnerable adults or vulnerable children never come to osteopaths? For the last couple of years I have taught a safeguarding children lecture on one of the SCCO modules. At each session there have been stories of practitioners who have had concerns about children. The important thing is to be prepared so that you know what to do should you have Continue Reading »

Have you thought about your conduct

Posted by Mint

Working in many of the well-known professions within healthcare and wider requires a certain level of conduct. There are expectations for your personal and professional behaviour. Some people consider this is an intrusion of their privacy. But when you sign up to a vocation you sign up to the accompanying lifestyle. Nobody wants to meet their GP in the gutter on a Friday night and then in the consulting room advising on lifestyle on Monday. For osteopaths there are occasions where conduct falls below the expected level. The misconduct may Continue Reading »

Is it time you checked?

Posted by Mint

Up date your clinic health and safety If you have more than 5 employees there are health and safety requirements and policies you must hold. Most practices will be under this threshold so those are the ones I address here. Even if you are an associate, if you notice something that could be improved you should raise it with your principle. These quick and simple checks will give an overview of your practice health and safety so you can check everything is up to date and take action as appropriate. Continue Reading »

Are you taking care of yourself, osteopath?

Posted by Mint

Standard D11 states that you must ensure that any problems with your own health do not affect your patients.   It is important that you take care of yourself as a practitioner. Working in practice is not easy, there are a lot of pressures – from people and business pressures. You know them for yourself I don’t need to list them.  Here are five ways you can take care of yourself:  1) Have a holiday. When did you last take a holiday? Do you routinely take breaks from clinic? It Continue Reading »

AHPs promoting Public Health

Posted by Mint

Following on from my blog last week. There was an important landmark document released this week – the AHP strategy for public health. This is all 4 nations working together. Fifteen AHP professions. All taking a lead in improving public health. The strategy recognises that AHPs are already at the forefront of promoting public health and seeks to emphasise and expand this aspect of their work through initial training, research, evidence, and workplace influence. Although a visionary document it gives an insight into the future influential role AHPs can have Continue Reading »

How do you promote health and well-being in practice?

Posted by Mint

There are two standards that emphasise the role of osteopaths in promoting health and wellbeing. C6. You must be aware of your wider role as a healthcare professional to contribute to enhancing the health and wellbeing of your patients. A5. You must support patients in caring for themselves to improve and maintain their own health and wellbeing. There are some areas of controversy in relation to public health, not least the arguments surrounding vaccination. I’m not going to address these areas but take a positive approach to considering areas of Continue Reading »

Skills and conundrums in helping people with pain

Posted by Mint

Using the biopsychosocial understanding for diagnosis and treatment requires an expansion of manual therapy skills. We have already looked in-depth at the explanation of why biomedical reasoning alone is not justified in explaining pain and treatment methods. This post will consider some of the challenges involved in applying biopsychosocial reasoning in clinic. Osteopathic principles? The challenges and changes in clinical reasoning from our understanding of pain and the lack of correlation between tissue state and treatment is also a challenge to osteopathic principles. There has already been questions regarding Still’s Continue Reading »

Grappling with diagnostic reasoning and treatment

Posted by Mint

Research has established that health practitioners are unable to rely on tissue based diagnoses and justify the effects of manual therapy on mobility or tissue lengthening. There is a realisation that patients need a psychosocial approach alongside biomedical intervention. This has led to the development of several models for diagnostic reasoning and treatment by manual therapists. I’ll just discuss a few models here. It’s a challenge to osteopaths to really think about their diagnostic reasoning and treatment methods in light of current evidence. It’s something all the manual therapy professions Continue Reading »

Reconceptualising an osteopathic approach to pain, Part 1

Posted by Mint

Research evidence has eroded the foundations of much of osteopathic and manual therapy clinical reasoning: Inaccuracy of palpation Unreliability of postural, tissue-based diagnosis Ineffectiveness of manual therapy techniques to achieve significant changes in posture, tension and mobility. Many postural and structural diagnostic explanations have been found to be invalid, Biopsychosocial? There is an increasing evidence of the importance of the biopsychosocial model. You may consider this to be nothing new. Osteopathic has always emphasised a holistic approach. However, if you were to consider the diagnostic reasoning, treatment methods and treatment Continue Reading »

Patient records – what should they include?

Posted by Mint

The Osteopathic Practice Standard C2 has a list of what must be included in patient records there are 15 items. I recommend you look through and see if there is anything that you are not routinely including in your notes. This is a list you should return to periodically because it is a prompt for you to maintain the standard of your notes, over time it is easy for things to slip and to get out of routine of including one element. As an example I’ll just highlight a few Continue Reading »