Professional practise Blog 7 Multidisciplinary Due Friday 29th October Hannah howley

Professional practise
Blog 7
Multidisciplinary
Due Friday 29th October
Hannah howley

What does it mean to be a massage therapist and a multi-disciplinary healthcare provider?

To me, being a massage therapist means being able to provide clients with the opportunity to come and get some sort of treatment in the way of reducing stress, relaxing and finding a way of being prepared mentally and physically pre and post event sport. Also, being involved and helping clients with goals and understanding of themselves is also very rewarding. I personally also feel strongly about working with in your own chosen field and abiding by the scope of practise that comes with it. I believe it is part of showing professionalism and being aware of your boundaries and what you are and are not allowed to do.

With regards to being a multidisciplinary provider, it all really depends on what scope of practise you are eligible to provide, where you work and what other types of healthcare professionals that you are connected with whether you are working with a group of other therapists or if you are in close contact with other therapists so that you can provide good referrals. There are some differences between being a CMT (certified massage therapist) and an RMT (remedial massage therapist). CMT’s mean that you are able to provide relaxation massages and an RMT is that of a remedial massage therapist so therefore can help with pain and immobility issues. In this case, the CMT wouldn’t try and fix clients injuries in much depth other than just tensional releases, whereas the RMT can do both and therefore be a referral or a helper to the CMT. So it’s kind of like we all sort of work together but sticking to what we know in our own field. Moreover, if you wanted to combine business or use an integrated practise with physiotherapist or such like, it is important to know their field, their scope of practise and to understand and respect their position as they will do likewise. For me, that is something that I am interested in looking in to – working at somewhere like Sports Med Otago, where they have Physiotherapists, nutritionists and sport massage therapists. This is the type of situation where you would be working in an integrated healthcare environment.

Integrated healthcare, cross-disciplinary and inter-professional healthcare are all words that pretty much mean the same thing but also sum up multidisciplinary provision where you are working in a place where there are several different types of therapists all with different scopes and codes.

Being an effective MDP would be you understanding your own scope of practise and respecting and understanding others and this can be achieved through research, dialogue and involvement and by research I mean finding out what they do differently and why? Being involved also, is something that is also beneficial because the more you are involved with something the more educated you are about it which is a good thing in the healthcare profession. It is important in an environment as important as that of the healthcare branch because you are dealing with people within your business and outside of your business and by outside I mean you have the power to make referrals and it is strongly beneficial if you have a good understanding of others and also effective communication skills. Overcoming barriers is also something else to look at with regards to being an effective MDP. As quoted from our notes “differences tend to act as barriers to understanding and relationships” states pretty well that if you don’t understand or respect others and there scopes of practise then it’ll be a pretty hard road ahead. The appreciation of differences is key.

The main point here that I am trying to get across is to understand all (or the ones relevant to you, but still just as important to know about the others) the different types of SoP’s. When you understand them you are able to work well with other practitioners, you’re able to ask them for help if you need to and you are able to refer your clients on where necessary.

So in summary of my discussion on the benefits of being involved with or being a multidisciplinary provider, I think it is an effective way of furthering your own profession and skills to make the most of your business and give the best service and be consistent throughout. Your clients come to you because they like who you are and they like your service so improving it isn’t going to do any harm.

References

Class Notes

My Own Thoughts