World Health Organization stated that human motor functions or movement ability can be improve and maximize while pain syndromes, physical challenges associated with injuries, diseases and other impairments can be relieved, treated or prevent by a physiotherapist’s assess, plan and implement rehabilitative programs. they apply a broad range physical therapies and techniques (1). According to online oxford dictionaries, physiotherapist is a person who treats people by using physical methods such as massage, heat treatment and exercise to treat disease, injury or deformity (2).
Basically, physiotherapist is a healthcare profession that diagnose, treat and assist someone to restore or give their maximum body function physically. For some reason, people might experience injury, illness or disability after an accident or performing surgery or even increasing in age. To prevent people suffering from disabilities, physiotherapists are needed in a society to guide and facilitate recovery, enabling people to have a better life with their ability to move and do more work without feeling any pain or having limitations.
Nervous system, respiratory system, circulatory system and musculoskeletal system are the range of disorder that physiotherapist may treat (8). Physiotherapist has many specialisation such as aquatic physiotherapist, cardiorespiratory physiotherapist, cardiothoracic physiotherapist, continence and women’s health physiotherapist, gerentological physiotherapist, maori physiotherapist (NZ), musculoskeletal physiotherapist, neurological physiotherapist, occupational health physiotherapist, paediatric physiotherapist and sports physiotherapist (8).
Physiotherapist is a world’s profession. Nowadys, a lot of people have accepted the existance of physiotherapists rather than before. Physiotherapist can work at clinic or hospital or in sports field. Other than that, they can work as trainer at the gym or open up a spa or giving service from home to home.
In order to help people and give the best service by using their knowledge and skills, a physiotherapist must practice good qualities in performing their role at any time. Excellent communication skills, good organisational skills, patience, sociable, adaptive and humble are the examples of good qualities that every physiotherapist must have.
Excellent Communication Skills
Communication skills is a very important skill that every physiotherapist must proficient. There are some aspects in communication skills that all physiotherapist must know and apply during their work such as skill in giving instructions and corrections, asking patient to follow demonstration, and having discussion with a patient about their goal setting, performance and health history (3).
Instructions and corrections are a common thing in physiotherapy. Physiotherapist should give a clear instruction to the patients or clients. If not, the treatment will be unsuccessful and a waste of time. Physiotherapist should avoid giving instructions in medical terms because not everyone know about the terms that we use. Besides, intructions and corrections should be given gently. That will show how polite we are as a medical healthcare to help them recover. The patient or client will like the service provided thus making them want to come back for other treatments.
In physical treatment, demonstration is a must. Physiotherapist cannot simply give an instruction and ask patient or client to do it. Physiotherapist should conduct them and watch how they perform it until they can do it the right way.
Physiotherapist should discuss with the patient about the goal setting of the treatment so that the patient can continously practising the exercise even at their home in order to achieve the goal. The goal that has been set must consider patient’s condition and time. Tell them about what they should avoid doing be it physicall or mentally, during the time of recovery.
Condition of a patient or client must be recorded to know their performance from time to time. This will ensure how effective the treatment is going and to confirm the patient or client attendance to the appointment set for them to have treatment and practising the exercise at home consistently.
Organisational skill
Next, to be a good physiotherapist, one must have good organisational skill. Good organizational skills begin with some basic organizational habits. Routine of writing things important down is one of the example. If wrote a note on a piece of paper, make sure to wrote it back on an organized paper or a place where the information will not lost. (6)
The main thing in organizational skill isthe ability to prioritize the various aspects of your work life. Prioritizing is determining the order for which to complete each of your tasks and make your work successfulto maintain the order in your job. (6)
Every job is primarily concerned with organizing skill in their own job field or situation in the work they are doing. This is to ensure one’s job will be done smoothly and effectively. A good organization will help reducing pressure while doing work or giving a treatment. Management aspects emphasized in the physiotherapy profession are patient management and problem solving management.
Patient management in physiotherapy is of course managing multiple patients at once. Physiotherapist cannot ignore any patient. All patients should be given full attention and observation to avoid them doing any mistakes and causing the injury to get even more worse than it originally has.
Not to forget, mental organisation is also important. Mental organisation is more to get ready in whatever thing will come. Be cool although it is hard.
How to be organised physiotherapist is by seek experiences whenever we are given opportunity. For instance, try to observe on senior’s working on patient and try to apply it. Why we need to be organised is to avoid physiotherapist from having depression while working and patients are happy with our service.
Patience
Physiotherapist is a profession that make him or her have to deal with people and in the world we live in, there are so many types of people with different attitudes, some might be difficult to handle compared to the others. Thus, patience is key. Medical healthcare should necessarily have a high level of patience including physiotherapist. Physiotherapist must be patient enough to handle a lot of patients, success in doing treatment and be patient to face a test.
As previously mentioned, this profession is dealing with patient so we have to try overcome whatever type of attitude the patient we are handling has. We have to try our best to give the treatment and make them happy. As example, a patient looks at the physiotherapist as non-physicians and the treatment given is considered nonsense and ineffective. Physiotherapist need to be patient to change their perceptions and believe that the treatment given to them will be effective, only if the follow orders.
Physiotherapist who treat people physically must have a desire to look at the effectiveness of their service, be it effective or ineffective. To, investigate their achievement patience is needed because recovery really takes time. There is something beautiful will come after the effort and wait. It will be always something that worth it and in this case, is the full recovery of a patient.
Everyone will face difficulty in their life and physiotherapist’s challenge may come from the patient, manager or the treatment they have to provide to the patient. Maybe a physiotherapist will be given a huge responsibility while he or she is handling a heavy case from another patient. Patience and plans are vital.
Get rid of negativity in our mind and instead, spread positivity to keep us moving forward. If a physiotherapist cannot get along with some situations try to find the best way such as getting help from other physiotherapist and have a rest for awhile to cool down. Never give up because that will make you regret someday.
Ability to encourage, emphathetic and firm
The another good qualities that a physiotherapist must have is the ability to encourage and boost patients’ confidence that they will recover, empathetic and firm towards patient so that they would not take advantage on us. There are various kind of patient we will meet a physiotherapist. Some patient may experience disability since birth or they just experience it because of an accident or even major or minor injury that make them despair.They might have the thought that they will not be able to recover forever and move normally would be a dream that will never come true. Thus making them not having the sincerity to undergo treatment as every treatment will be useless for them, but wel all know that it is not true. They might even come to an appointment only for the sake of their family. From this situation, a physiotherapist should encourage and convince them that they have a hope to have a better life, and miracles do happen only if they work towards it.
A physiotherapist should encourage the society to do exercises at least two to three days a week. Exercise gives a lot of benefits to the cardiovascular, muscle, mental and more. Sports Day should be organised to create awareness among children, youngsters and elders.
Physiotherapist should be firm in carrying out their task. This is to ensure patient or client follow the instructions given. Be firm but still be polite to them.
Confident
It is vital for an physiotherapists be confident in whatever they do. According to Meriam Webster, confident means having or showing assurance or self-reliance (4). Confident bring a lot of benefits such as efficacy of treatment. Physiotherapist must confident to do their job and making a decision.
Physiotherapist should have the confident to do the job since they are studying. However, confident can be built up slowly as long as someone has a passion on it. It is not easy but we always can try because practice makes perfect. To build a confident to be a physiotherapist, try ask a senior or make a research about this profession. We should set in mind, when everyone can make something that we think that is not possible for us to do, it is actually a possible thing we can do.
As a physiotherapist, they should think and make a decision to give a suitable treatment for a patient. In our life, we always have many opinions from others. Therefore, we should think and use our knowledge wisely. Give your opinion with good evidences to show that you are confident in what you do. Confident in making decision will make patient trust us. Trust from patient will create a good work experience.
Intelligence
Intelligence is the basic characteristic of a good physiotherapist. Intelligence is needed in making decision, organisation, handling patients and many more. In everything we do, we should not follow our emotion but try to think before we act. If we cannot think the best decision, nice organisation and how to handle patient, we will face a problem. Having a problem will interrupt your profession.
Humble
Physiotherapist is a world’s profession, so they should proud of themselves but stay humble. Humble willl make you look professional. Being humble is an efficient way to make it easier for physiotherapist to communicate with patients. People will respect you more because your attitude and you are knowledgable.
Adaptive
Physiotherapist’s are adviced to be adaptable for some situation or location. Adaptable person is people who are flexible. They can still be relax even the plans or something is not going well but they take it as something new to learn. Being adaptive can make you achieve something better (5).
Physical therapy can be applied everywhere, in order to collect experience physiotherapist should change their work area such as from hospital to sports association. Adaptive is vital for this situation for you to create a good working environment. The location that we work may be different too in terms of temperature or wether it is a rural area or a city.
Physiotherapist also should be adaptive for every kind of patient. This is to ensure physiotherapist not being too clumsy in giving their service and still can give the best treatment.
Supportive
Besides, physiotherapist should be supportive to everyone. The most important is physiotherapist should be supportive to their patients or clients or even patient’s family members. Some patients will losing their hope to move normally or having full recover, so physiotherapist should take an action to support or encourage them and always giving advice and give maximum help to them. Positive health outcomes is the result from supportive social relationship including a positive patient-practitoner relationship (8).
Physiotherapist not only can give support to patients but also to their team mates. Give good words to them to help them feel motivated. We are not only give support when they need but give them support everyday because a team will always need each other. Support each other can helps build and maintain effective interpersonal relationships (7).
High level of fitness
A great physiotherapist should have high level of fitness because one of their role is to make other people fit. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defined physical fitness as the ability to do daily tasks with vigor and alertness, without experiencing fatigue, and with ample energy to enjoy leisure-time pursuitsand respond to emergencies. Based on the definition, anything we do will involve the fitness as we getting out of bed to hiking to perfoming CPR (9).
Depending from the source,fitness has many components. The components are cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular endurance, muscular strength, muscular power, flexibility, balance, speed and body composition. Although muscular endurance, strength and power look as the same but there is different among each type of the component. Normally, componants that is used to assess fitness are endurance and strenght but by analyzing the other components will make a complete picture of overall fitness, along with health and athleticism (9).
So, the reason why a good physiotherapist should have a high level of fitness is because they need to demonstrate to patients and clients the right exercise and an accurate posture, also to help and guide them to be fit or sometimes physiotherapist need to carry patients.
Before apply a job as a physiotherapist, test your fitness and try to increase and maintain the fitnessess. Here is some suggestion on how to be fit. First, check your height, weight and BMI and record. Second, do a light exercise everyday in the morning and evening for two weeks. Third, jog for a short distance for five weeks and then jog for a long distance in ten weeks. To increase your muscle strength, do exercises at the gym.
Conclusion
To sum up, to be a great and excellent physiotherapist, one should have all the characteristics mentioned above. If physiotherapists have all the characteristics, they will make their family proud of them even themselves. The physiotherapist will satisfied with their own service given. Patients and clients also must be very happy and satisfied. Having good attitude will make people around us comfortable to work with us.
In the contrary, if we have bad attitude, we may be fired or we will face a difficulty