Collaborating on your health

Photo: Thinkstock.com

A well-known expression in approaches to patient care is “if all you have is a hammer, all you see is a nail”. Surely this is also prevalent in other fields as well and basically means that often times a practitioner will have the patient fit into their scope of knowledge rather than objectively looking at a patient and deciding what the best course of care may be. Mostly this is done without any kind of malice, but there is an inherent bias that exists based on the training and specific skill set of the health care professional.

A patient with low back pain may present to the family doctor and simply be prescribed pain medications and told to come back in a couple weeks if it doesn’t resolve. This is not necessarily bad advice but simply how the doctor treats low back pain according to their skill set. Conversely an acupuncturist may see this as a problem that acupuncture can effectively treat. The same goes for a surgeon, physical therapy and yes of course a doctor of Chiropractic. And all these practitioners are likely correct to a degree. The pain may eventually get better and if it doesn’t the patient will likely seek an alternative practitioner to find some help. This exists with all types of injuries and illnesses. The problem is that patients often end up suffering for longer periods because they were not initially diagnosed correctly and proper treatment was delayed.

The goal of the health care practitioner from the initial assessment has to focus on diagnosing the problem correctly. This is often the most difficult thing to do because inherently we see things from a certain perspective and want to help our patients as best as we can. I believe that one of the strongest traits that a healthcare practitioner can have is knowing when to refer and having a strong network of other healthcare providers who can provide a different perspective. The patient has nothing to lose and everything to gain in this model.

Employing this approach, we were very happy to open Momentum Health in downtown Kelowna last month. We are proud to be able to offer chiropractic, registered massage therapy, Active Release Techniques and rehabilitation to our patients under one roof. We also look forward to adding other health disciplines in the coming months. It is an exciting time for us and we could not be more proud of the beautiful facility that we get to work out of each day and providing the best health services possible for our patients. All the practitioners at Momentum Health have many years of experience and our patients are already seeing the benefits of our collaborative approach.

We are located at 103-1664 Richter Street and our website is http://www.momentumkelowna.com . We look forward to connecting with you!

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.