Physical Therapist Relationship

The relationship between a physical therapist and his/her patient is essential to the future treatment of the patient. Unlike other medical fields where the patient may only visit once or twice, a physical therapist deals with patients for a longer duration from a few weeks to a couple of months.

A sense of trust, loyalty and comfort is important to be established between the therapist and the patient. In medical universities, before anything else, a student is taught to maintain a professional relationship, to respect a patient’s privacy and to uphold the patient’s dignity.

But sometimes, miscommunications and misconceptions tend to cause problems in this relationship.

There are certain aspects to a relationship between any medical practitioner, such as a physical therapist and the patient being treated. Some of which are:

 Consent of the patient: Before performing any treatment on a patient, the therapist should make sure that the patient allows it. Without taking the consent of a patient, no treatment procedure is to be conducted. If consent of patient is not taken, then the patient would not feel comfortable and without knowledge of treatment, the patient is at full rights to take consequential action against the particular …show more content…
But as a physical therapist, and due to certain ethics and morals that are to be followed, one can’t necessarily abandon his/her patient. Usually, talking it out with the patient helps to resolve the problems faced by both the therapist as well as the patient. But in some cases where patients tend to be uncooperative, the doctor-patient relationship may be strained but the physical therapist does all he/she can to help the patient none the less. Thus must be the attitude. If at all, one is not able to deal with the patient, he/she can be referred to another physical therapist or program by the current