Chaos and the Birth of Telehealth
COVID-19 led to the growth of Telehealth. How it can benefit you!
By Garrett de Jong, D.C.
After a few restless nights at the beginning of the pandemic, I decided to put my energy towards two things: 1) starting an online practice (Telehealth) and 2) growing my knowledge and skill set as a practitioner.
A few months into my online practice here’s the pro’s and con’s of Telehealth in my opinion:
Pros
Convenient
No more commuting, can be done from your own home, flexible hours. Who doesn’t like that?!
Empowering
I can (and probably will) write an entire blog post on this. But essentially the constraints of telehealth are actually one of its greatest strengths! You can’t be convinced that you need to be ‘fixed’ and you NEED to take ownership to be YOUR best therapist. During lockdown there was no other way. (Side note: check out this article about how Hospitals were essentially closed for a month yet we did just fine! We need to question our current healthcare system and limit naive interventions leading to iatrogenic problems.) This is a lesson I will surely take with me to my in-person sessions too!
Effective
Again the constraints of telehealth emphasized a thorough visual assessment and history taking. A mentor of mine once said up to “95% of healthcare is a conversation.” Telehealth is almost more personal because we value this conversation. Through this visual assessment and conversation powerful interventions can be produced. I have been able to record people’s movement and slow it down to accurately assess movement so my rehab plan can be extremely thorough. Treatment consists of lifestyle recommendations and individualized exercises that YOU can do daily. This shifts our mindset from a passive ‘fix me’ mentality which creates a fragile patient-dependency to one where YOU are in control. A strong sense of control is one of the strongest predictors of recovery.
Telehealth is convenient, empowering and effective!
Cons:
No hands-on
There will always be a place for hands on therapy. It has been around for thousands of years. There is undeniable truth to this. Yet I am a strong believer that manual therapy alone is limited. Passive treatment is a nudge is the right direction. No more no less. A nudge can really get the ball rolling yet isn’t so powerful to create a dependency. In my opinion manual therapy is all for not unless the client takes an active role in his or hers rehab. Again, YOU will be your best therapist, I will just nudge you in the right direction!
Convenient
Yes this is also a ‘con’. I think a lot of people are going stir crazy so leaving the house for an appointment is sometimes what we need!
Poor wifi
No surprise here. We are not immune to wifi issues. I recommend making sure you have a half-decent connection. When I first started telehealth I only had 1 Mbps upload speed! It worked well most of the time but was annoying every once in a while!
I love hearing stories of how people are adapting to our new environment. Feel free to share your stories with me 🙂
For more info on Telehealth check out my Instagram 🙂
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