Listening Beyond Words: A Reflection on Identity, Care, and Connection
In this poignant account, the author relates a single statement made by a patient that changed her perception of disability, treatment, and “personal agency.” Both she and a student DPT learned a profound truth from this gentleman about the unspoken challenges faced by patients—ones that often go unheard. This powerful article argues for an “alternative approach” to treatment that “prioritizes dignity, agency, and belonging.”
How Individuals with Disabilities Experience Therapeutic Alliance in Physical Therapy: A Qualitative Analysis
Do patients receiving rehabilitation benefit from being treated by a physical therapist who also has a disability? This study addressed that core question. Participants included PTs with or without disabilities and their patients. Results showed that a shared identity of disability “positively impacted therapeutic alliance.” The article details the research process, and offers suggestions for its application in the clinic and the university.
Counting What Matters
In a few words, this powerful poem depicts the experience of a spouse as her loved-one goes through a cancer diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. This caregiver is also a physical therapist; her words show what living through this process feels like for “a spouse rather than a clinician.” The poet includes a prose reflection on rehabilitation as a “lived process.” Spending a few moments with these words may well deepen any reader’s understanding and empathy.
Resources: Fostering Resiliency and Authenticity
Our June Resources page highlights a variety of learning experiences for summer reading, listening, and contemplation. A reflection by the page’s author also depicts her recent visit to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, MD. Encountering these resources is a terrific way to welcome summer and expand our intellectual horizons. Enjoy.
Integrating Community-Based Learning in Speech-Language Pathology Education: A Quality Improvement Initiative
This sensitive study reports on the experiences of Speech-Language Pathology students in a community-based choral singing program for adults with neurogenic communication impairment. The students’ responses are telling; they note how this sharing, interactive experience increased their confidence, self-awareness, empathy, and much more. The article details how this project was developed and executed.
Are You Tending to Your Garden? Reflections On Accessibility and Disability in Physical Therapy Education
As summer begins, JHR’s June issue offers the metaphor of “tending to your garden”—and, through these authors’ words, applies it to the creation of accessible learning environments! This creative article provides images and reflections by artist and gardener Brandon Ness—and three of his faculty colleagues—on the “support and accessibility” needed to design a healthy growing environment, both in a garden and a university curriculum.
Communication, Empathy, and Emotional Intelligence in DPT Students: The Impact of a Distance-Learning Training Program During a Clinical Education Experience
In order to reach our goal of patient-centered care, we must cultivate affective skills such as empathy as vital components of the rehabilitation process. These authors implemented a distance-learning affective skills program into a university DPT curriculum and assessed its results. Their findings “emphasize the importance of integrating patient-centered skills” into clinical education experiences nationwide. They detail the program and their assessments here.
Reconciliation and Occupational Therapy in Canada: Experiences and Perspectives From Practitioners
This extensive article reports on the history of oppression of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, and relates their struggle to the present day—specifically, to the field of occupational therapy. Through the personal Stories of the three authors, the abstract becomes real. They bring to life the experiences of The Métis People, the Sipekne’katik First Nation, Mi’kmaq Nation, the Inuit Peoples and others, told from their own perspective as occupational therapists. Their goal is to inspire others to work toward decolonization and reconciliation throughout Canada.
What I Miss When I’m Certain
In today’s health care system, clinicians are constantly rushed, spread thin, under pressure to meet productivity expectations. Where, in the midst of this turmoil, is there room for reflection? For the questioning and learning that nurtures evidence-based practice and optimal patient care? In his essay, Argel Brown details his own experience addressing these challenges, and recounts his personal solution to the dilemma: cultivating curiosity.
Safety For Me Is…
What is the actual art and science of feeling safe? This simple yet profound poem connects the outer with the inner, the outside world with the mitochondrial—rather like taking a deep breath of fresh, clean air. Is this the true effect of empathy? Of “eye contact” without shame? The poem gently nudges us to pause, reflect, and contemplate what—at a fundamental level—safety is for all of us.