We are just halfway through 2022, and 2023 is on the way.
After the covid-19 pandemic, we’ve seen significant challenges in the medical field. The way of treatment has changed.
Rehabilitative care; One of the most important medical departments have faced many challenges in 2022.
As a hand therapist, you may also come across few challenges as well.
Here we would like to discuss a few practical solutions to make your job easy.
After Covid-19, the clinical prospects have evolved to deliver better treatment. More technological involvement bridges the gap between therapists and patients. Now location is not a barrier anymore.
Changes are always good, but sometimes they become challenging too!
So, let’s discuss them briefly. We Hope you can correlate the article with your personal experience in clinical practice.
Common challenges faced by hand therapists in 2022
Reducing no. of staff due to lack of patients: (resolved by Home therapy)
Working with less staff is really difficult, but your hospital wants to reduce the number of staff. This situation undoubtedly increases your work pressure.
In this case, you have two options.
- You can open your personal hand therapy clinic, which might be an expensive decision
or
- Simply provide at -home therapy. It could be the best option if you have a smaller number of supporting staff.
You can deliver promising treatment with the help of at -home hand therapy for the outpatient department (OPD). It is not only good for you but also comfortable for your patients. Especially elderly patients prefer to get rehabilitative care from their comfort zone. Don’t worry about its efficacy; the Latest technologies make at-home therapy more realistic with the ensured outcome.
(We’ll emphasize it in the next paragraph of the article)
Now you may think about the billing process?
The billing process for at-home hand therapy is exactly the same as in a clinical setting.
When personal safety is an issue, take the help of tele-rehab
Safety is not only essential for patients but also crucial for therapists.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been difficult to treat many patients in a chamber, and it is hard to follow the restrictive and mandatory safety measures.
In this case, telerehabilitation can definitely help you. You can deliver the best hand therapy treatment remotely while maintaining necessary physical distancing.
The advanced tele-rehab opportunity reduces unnecessary in-person visits and saves your time too.
With telehealth for hand therapy, you can reach out to more patients and help them regain their hand strength.
Skeptical attitude of patients towards remote-fashioned rehab care
Many patients don’t believe in remote rehab care, especially remote hand therapy. They still believe in conventional therapeutic treatment in an in-person visit. But sometimes, it is difficult to access them physically, which can reduce the patient retention rate.
How can you handle this situation?
Educating patients is a great way to bring faith in remote hand therapy.
You can open your YouTube channel or personalized medical website and talk about your remote-rehab therapy, the procedures, and the kinds of tools you use for monitoring and assessment. Don’t forget to add patient testimonials and success stories. Take patient details, including their email address, and send them weekly hand therapy newsletter.
All these processes help you to reach out to more patients and build trust in your delivered treatment.
Handling extensive work pressure
Extensive work is very common in medical practice. You also need to handle a lot of work as a hand therapist.
We know you love your job, but sometimes you may feel stress due to unavoidable circumstances like lack of supporting staff, patients’ non-cooperation towards treatment, or stress from patients’ families.
Again long hours on the job with a constant stream of patients to treat, documentation of each patient, and paperwork are tedious jobs. All these tasks make your routine stressed .
However, you can save time by using the latest technology.
Artificial intelligence can help you with paperwork and documentation. If you pre-program an AI-enabled documentation device, then it can collect the complete patient history and represent it in front of you in an effortless way .
You can use dedicated medical software to save all patient history. Therefore, you don’t need to always start from the initial level for your old patients, significantly saving your time. The seamless reporting options of AI-integrated software will help you deliver result-oriented hand therapy.
Increase in the patient dropout rate
Patient non-compliance, non-adherence to treatment till the end, and dropout of patients are very common problems in rehab care therapy.
Not following the whole treatment process can negatively affect patients’ health; on the other hand, it can also financially hurt your clinic. After the covid-19 pandemic, the rate of dropping out of patients increased significantly because they don’t want to come to the clinic; instead, they want treatment remotely from their comfort zone.
Here you can choose the telehealth option to deliver therapeutic care remotely.
Also, make your hand therapy session engaging with Gamification technology.
The integration of games makes the hand therapy exercise interesting.
Squegg has an innovative digital smart grip strengthener. It is a Bluetooth-enabled dynamometer that helps hand therapists quickly evaluate, assess, and improve their patients’ grip strength. In-app games and fun exercises are also integrated to make the hand exercise fun. Therapists worldwide are using and recommending this smart device because patients love to continue their training with it.
Try out this digital grip strengthener for your patients, and don’t forget to leave feedback!