I have chosen to use the photo of a young girl putting her arm around another child in a comforting way. Both children are headed on a very lonely path- it looks as if the child with her arm around the other child is attempting to help the child on his/her way to wherever they’re going.

What I take from this photo is that we as qualified and aspiring physiotherapists could be a bit more sympathetic and empathetic when dealing with our patients, and learning from my general block at New Somerset Hospital, the patients suffering from sadness or depression require our compassion and understanding- and this sadness is often related to their personal lives and social issues. According to Haslam: “compassion often flows spontaneously from empathy– the ability to imagine another’s experience”, and goes on to say “we shouldn’t let our essential scientific training get in the way of learning from the humanities” (Haslam, 2015).

I had a patient, who had recently undergone an above-knee amputation (AKA), and she was so depressed for days- she would have intermittent spells of crying, and it was virtually impossible to conduct an assessment or provide any treatment because she was crying due to phantom limb pain, i.e. localised pain in the region of the removed body part (“Phantom limb pain”, 2018), as well as her struggling to come to terms with the fact that one of her legs was gone. In that moment, all I felt was sympathy and regrettably pity towards her. I tried to console her and motivate her as best I could, but everything seemed a little too raw and fresh for her, so it is important for me to take a step back and look at things from the her perspective.

Just as the girl is helping the younger child along the way, we as physiotherapists should be present for our patients helping them along the way in their recovery. We should, in our capacity, guide our patients through their difficulties (relating to their functional problems) by providing support, education and motivation.

References

Haslam, D. (2015). “More than kindness”. Journal Of Compassionate Health Care, 2(1). doi: 10.1186/s40639-015-0015-2

Phantom limb pain. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.physio-pedia.com/Phantom_limb_pain