I have a Venn diagram that I talk about a lot, in which there are three main elements of a great surgical outcome: a great surgeon, a great therapist, and a great patient. Where they overlap is the relationships between each of them; and the sweet spot in the middle is where all parties are contributing optimally to the patient getting well, and where you have the best odds for a great result. Therefore, one of the things I really focus on is our relationships with the other great clinicians around us. I work with a lot of doctors and other therapists, and regularly meet up with them to exchange ideas and discuss cases, as I feel this helps me to offer my patients the best care I can. So, at their request, in June 2018, Victory hosted a group of doctors and support staff from our friends at London Sports Orthopaedics (LSO).
We ran it as a type of “speed dating” event, where Victory therapists each gave a 10-minute demonstration of an aspect of our practice to a group from LSO, before the bell rang and the group moved on to the next demo.
If you’ve been to see us or have read this blog before, you’ll know that we see the human body a little bit differently in my physiotherapy practices. Rather than diving straight into the bit that hurts, our goal is to find and treat the underlying cause of people’s injuries. So the demos started with the physio team: Lauren and I gave a brief explanation and demo of how we work out what is driving the pain, talking the LSO team through our postural and movement assessments, and showing them how we correct and re-test each dysfunctional link in the kinetic chain until we find the link(s) that are triggering the symptoms, known as the driver.
Soft tissue therapist Hayley then led a couple of games to demonstrate palpation skills – how we use our hands to feel for what’s going wrong.
Sports rehab therapist Helen talked through the various phases of really thorough injury rehabilitation, explaining how she manages to work both on the painful part and the driver, integrating them together to restore normal movement, and then prescribing and teaching exercises to improve strength, flexibility and endurance as this helps to reduce the risk of future injury.
Finally, movement and balance therapist Elizabeth explained the importance of calibrating the eyes, ears and proprioceptors in reducing physical stress and improving efficiency of movement – again, useful in both injury treatment and prevention.
Also part of our team are Victor (clinical psychology) who teaches our patients to reduce their pain through cognitive behavioural therapy strategies; Iris (yoga rehab) who helps our patients with end-stage rehab and stress control; and physio Nikki whose speciality is the link between the visceral system and chronic back pain.
Although Victory is now closed, I’m always happy to meet with great consultants and therapists who, like me, always want to do the best for their patients – so if that sounds like you and you’d like to visit me, chat to us about what I and you do, then please do email my team at help@nellmead.com and let’s start building a relationship!