Why I have migrated from mainstream Physical Therapy to a more Integrated Concept of Health.
by Luciana Segantin, MPT
I have been a PT for two decades now. Yes! Two decades!
It seemed yesterday when I graduated in Brazil. Life and options were endless and I decided that I was going to take my life by the horns...
As per my uncle invitation, he is a licensed MD in the USA, I started as a volunteer PT in a hospital in North Carolina. A year later, while volunteering as a research assistant at NIH in Bethesda, MD I received my license as a PT and started practicing. Boy, I was excited!
However, little did I know that the PT practice was not as I had imagined nor as I had experienced in my early graduate years in Brazil. As much we have an immense array of equipment to help us here in the US and countless software to make "our lives easier" when it comes to access and bill patients, there was something missing.
In order to fulfill insurance´s requirements and be able to handle caseloads, something and someone was always taking a tool. Usually, therapists and patients were the ones to suffer. Especially the latter.
Who hasn´t been to a gym where the PT is seeing many patients at the same time and patients are being overlooked? Yes, we try our best. We really do. Because we care. However, it is almost humanly impossible to comply with all demands and still provide a good and sensible care.
As a result, I was constantly in distress and in pain. Not to mention, I really didn´t have time to really listen (not hear) what actually consisted my patients complains. How they were really doing, how were their lives, their daily stressors, if they could cope or not with it and, especially, if all these factors could have caused or aggravated their pain.
We all know we are not only a compilation of bones, organs, skin, and muscles. We are more than that. We are what we eat, what we think, we are our relationships, what we see, what we hear. All of these factors play a role in our health or lack thereof.
Thus, after doing some soul searching and a lot, but a lot of research, I decided to invest in myself and decided to pursue an education on Integrative Health techniques.
These techniques include manual therapy, soft touch techniques, concepts in psychoneuroimmunology, some concepts in nutrition, diet supplementation and spirituality.
Since my background has always been evidence-based, I had to make sure those techniques had a scientific background to make me more comfortable to apply them. And they do!
Neuroscience today is coming up with so many astounding discoveries... I will be gradually posting some of them, it is really amazing!
In sum, I am still walking on this path and it has been more fulfilling each day for both myself and for my patients. I can see them now with a different perspective, with a better, integrative set of tools that make me understand them in a deeper, full context.
There has been a beautiful path of self-knowledge and professional enhancement.
There is always more to learn and to share. But, from this point on, there is no turning back.
Just moving forward,
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