We talked with Heidi Engel and Ellen Hillegass about the webinar and resources being produced about COVID-19

We cover:What is the best role for PT during this viral pandemic?What can we learn from the experiences of our ICU successes and failures?Why is the PT ability to create therapeutic alliance with patients now more crucial than ever? 

Bringing our best selves to patients who are at their most vulnerable, avoiding the provision of futile care, having the restoration of medically complex patients lives be the Center always focus of what we do. We need to serve the patient before we serve the system.

Traditionally, PTs have been a reactive (waiting for the referral and protocol for the MD), group focused on orthopedic and neurological patients primarily. Medicine and health have shifted dramatically away from that paradigm of who needs PT dramatically. Yet we often are caught in a tangle of insurance dictates and hospital administration priorities that don’t help us shift our care towards the people who need us most. It is time for PTs to become proactive, become patient advocates- bring clinical decision making and their skills to patient centered care for medically complex people.

COVID 19 is a public health problem first and medical problem second, PTs will need to strategize how they prioritize their care.

Medically complex patients need more intensive and frequent therapies, not less, a reversal of traditional assumptions.

Skeletal Muscle is a vital and misunderstood organ system PTs can play a vital role in protecting.

Link to webinar: https://www.cardiopt.org/pdf/pubs/3-28-20-HPA-Webinar-Recording.pdf

Slides for webinar: https://www.aptahpa.org/resource/resmgr/webinars/3-28-20_Presentation_Handout.pdf

Physiotherapy Guidelines: http://www.apta.org/PTinMotion/News/2020/03/26/AcuteHospitalCOVIDGuidelines/

Prone Positioning: o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_6jT9R7WJs o https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa1214103