As a patient, when you require rehabilitation treatment, you’re faced with having to make a tough decision in choosing the clinic that will help you get back to your usual self. And to add to the already mountainous amount of pressure, the clocks ticking, as every day you’re not receiving treatment you have to manage the pain or discomfort yourself. And with so many clinics seemingly offering identical services, how do you choose the right one for you? As a Guelph rehabilitation clinic ourselves, we strive to separate ourselves from the hundreds of other clinics not with what we offer, but how we offer it. And we often find that for many patients it comes down to precisely this. Like we said, every clinic provides the services, so it’s about selecting the clinic that you think gives you the best chance to eliminate all or most of your pain and discomfort and get you back to your routine. Continue reading below to learn more about how we strive to separate our clinic from the rest with our unique approach to patient treatment.
THE OTHER CLINICS
It’s no secret that there are many physiotherapy and rehabilitation clinics in Guelph and the surrounding area. But even though there are many different clinics, we find that the majority of them share a similar approach when it comes to patient treatment. What we find is that these clinics tend to address a patient’s symptoms by departments. What we mean here is that although all the employees work for the same clinic, they work more individually. This means that as a patient you may work almost exclusively with a physiotherapist or other health care professional. And that even though other forms of treatment may offer you some benefits, you more than likely won’t receive other treatment.
Now that’s not to say that all clinics operate this way. Many will treat a patient using multiple professionals and services. One day you may visit the physiotherapist, whereas the next visit your physiotherapist may recommend that you work with the massage therapist. Even though you’re working with multiple professionals, they still only focus and address what they are responsible for and what they can do— with very little communication between various members of the team.
Now, you might be thinking “who cares if they communicate with each other or not. As long as I get my treatment and feel better, then I’m happy.”. But the truth is, a multi-disciplinary approach is much different from a collaborative approach and can have much different results too.
This is where we come in.
OUR UNIQUE APPROACH
At Guelph Rehab, we pride ourselves on our collaborative approach to patient treatment. We believe that it’s not enough to merely be a “one-stop shop”. Yes, our method involves a multi-disciplinary aspect, but it’s the collaboration between our team members that truly make a patient’s experience with us unique.
Our collaborative approach is based on the idea that many minds working together are better than many minds working individually. This means that every patient that walks through our doors receives the utmost attention from our team. We do this by involving multiple health care professionals from the get-go and develop a multi-disciplinary treatment plan to get you back to your usual self. But it doesn’t stop there. After establishing a multi-disciplinary approach, our team meets weekly with you to discuss your progress both overall and with each therapist. From there, our team works together to adjust your treatment plan if needed and set new goals.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
As the patient, you might be wondering what this means for you. And first and foremost, it means results. By working with a team with a collaborative approach, you can be sure that every professional you work with is on the same page and working towards the same goal. You know that what you discussed with one person one week, will be communicated to the rest of the team in time for your next visit and that collaboratively, our team has your health and wellness in mind. You get the experience and knowledge of multiple highly-trained professionals, not just one and can rest assured knowing you’re getting the proper treatment for your situation. This means that if our team believes that one treatment service is better suited for you than another, you’ll receive exactly that. No costly appointments with professionals looking to “do the best they can” and get paid, you work with the best professional for the job while receiving the expertise of our entire team.
When it comes to selecting the rehabilitation clinic for you, we highly recommend researching more than merely a clinic’s services. We suggest looking into how they offer their services and how they go above and beyond a simple single-pronged or multi-disciplinary approach. And even though this might seem like extra, unnecessary work, it is all in your best interest and all part of getting you the treatment you need. If you’d like to learn more about our collaborative approach to patient treatment, we encourage you to reach out to us by phone, email or even social media. We’d be more than happy to chat with you and share our passion for providing the best possible care to every patient.
