Building Up Your Reputation As the Go to Hand Specialist
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[00:00:00] Does anyone go to, um, visit doctors with your patients? Anyone ever done that? If you have a, um, if you have a complex I don't do it all the time. I really pick and choose when I go. Um, and it just depends on your It depends on where you work. Right, it just depends on where you work, but what a great amazing opportunity to build your Reputation your own brand right?
It doesn't matter You don't have to go out on your own you can work for somebody for a super long time You can decide to go on your own whichever one it is It's just a really great opportunity to learn I think build relationships. I've always been able to do that. Um, When I started working in, I [00:01:00] started in acute care and I would see the doctors on the floors and I would always just make it a point to like, you know, sometimes you can like make sure that you're there at the right time just to chit chat with them and talk about this case or that case.
And um, when I moved into outpatient, I was given this opportunity as well. So sometimes, you just have to take your opportunity. You have to make sure that somebody knows that, hey, this is something that you could do, right? It does take time out of productive patient care. So that's why I say, you know, be thoughtful and pick and choose who you're doing it with.
But today I had a chance to go and talk to the surgeon with my patient because she has Rheumatoid Arthritis. She's young and, um, she needs surgery. So, [00:02:00] and the reason why was just like, you know, she's very emotional about it because she's thinking about what she did in the past. She's trying to be present, but she's also thinking way, way, way ahead in her future.
Like, what's my life going to be like? And, and that kind of stuff. And if you can imagine somebody with rheumatoid arthritis, In this day and age, everyone's looking stuff up, right? They're looking not just on the information and how to eat and how to exercise, but they're looking at the deformities that are coming from, you know, from rheumatoid arthritis.
And I'll tell you, before I go into the lecture, that, you know, when I was, you know, and this is a hand surgeon that I know, respect, and I actually refer quite a few second opinion cases to. So if I have a surgery coming from somewhere else and they're not quite happy with the [00:03:00] results or they're looking for a second opinion, he is one of my top choices I always recommend.
Um, so if, you know, over time as you build your reputation in the, you know, as a hand therapist, as a specialist, you don't have to be a certified hand therapist to do this, but this is a great way to start building up that reputation of yours. Um But I was talking to him about rheumatoid, you know, arthritis, and you know, she had a lot of questions, and I, I was the one who caught the problem, um, because she had gone to a lot of other therapy clinics before finding mine.
And I caught the problem, and I was like, yeah, it really benefits you to go to the surgeon and, you know, have a discussion about what kind of surgery you might require. Right? And that was the first time that someone had mentioned to her that she might need surgery. [00:04:00] Right? And, um, that, that can instantly build trust between you and the patient.
You know, when you're, when you're able to find these things and you can guide them. And then I was able to give her from the top two surgeons that I like, like who's going to give her the time and attention. When you're talking about second. opinion, um, visits. You're, you're thinking about like, Oh, who can I, who can I send her to?
That's going to give her the time and attention. I knew this guy would. So, um, it was really interesting because what do you guys think, what do you see in rheumatoid arthritis? What do you guys know about rheumatoid arthritis? That's not our topic, but what's, what do you guys know about rheumatoid arthritis?
The last couple of weeks I've had a few, and that has been my course that I learned that it came from the rest, like the owner.[00:05:00]
I think Megan also recommended, like, the owner drift, um, brace, which I actually recommended to a patient, and I saw it in real time, and we tried it on, and everything, and it looked actually really great. Yeah, perfect. So, um, there's, there's a couple of things that you kind of want to think about. Um, okay, let me not make this into a rheumatoid lecture.
I'm talking about thumbs! Uh, but And the great thing is, like, I was like, she doesn't have any thumb issues. But you always want to think about the disease process.
Right? You want to think about the disease process first, and then you think about, um, the biomechanical stuff. And that's going to be, you know, essentially your ortho issues. So, in terms [00:06:00] of RA, what's the disease process? The disease process is that it's autoimmune, right? What does that mean? That means the body is attacking itself.
Where does it attack itself? It attacks itself at the joint level, which is bone and ligaments, right? And it actually doesn't just attack the wrist. It's just that that's what we see as hand therapists. It can attack any joint system.
It will attack the shoulder, it will attack the elbow, it will attack the wrist, it will attack the knee, it can attack the hip, it can attack the ankles, right? Um, so what happens is because of the disease process, what you see is a pattern of deformity,[00:07:00]
right? So the wrist stuff that you're, that we see or the, the, the ligament issues that we see, the tendon disruptions that we see are due to the pattern of deformities. The things that we see are, it's the deformity, right? We see the pain, we see the decrease in function, we see the decrease in range of motion, right?
That's what we see. But we see all of this due to this right here. So, she had a flammatory process, she had a, she had an episode because the disease process like, pshh, and it just attacked her wrist and she got super inflamed. She actually came to me for her elbow, right? So, one elbow was, one elbow got attacked but it wasn't too bad, but the right one was like the worst one.
And then when she came to me, I, we worked on the elbow and then I was like, [00:08:00] okay, what's, you know, something's going on with your hand. Uh, and you know, it started down that path. Um, she was having hand issues, but the elbow was worse. And once the elbow started to resolve, some of the issues on, about her hand started to really come out.
And so, what happens is that, that pattern of, uh, that you see usually is a zigzag pattern, right? So like, you know, you saying like the, the fingers go ulnarly, but the fingers go ulnarly because the metacarpals go radially. And it's because the carpal bones go ulnarly. That is that zigzag pattern that you see.
So it was really interesting, uh, to talk to, you know, just to hear him say those things. to her in the way that I was essentially saying. So it allows you sometimes when [00:09:00] you have an opportunity to do that is to hear how the surgeon speaks. Um, and to make sure that you're essentially like still on point with it.
