Let me tell you a story about the time a well intentioned suggestion nearly crippled my patient .
Back in 2015 I was a sports injury therapist treating a patient with an exceptionally complex medical history.
I’d met him at a mutual swim session and he’d tried everything else to ease the excruciating pain he was in every day due to a mistake during a spine surgery.
I didn’t know if I could help but he was willing to try.
Here’s what happened:.
A few weeks into treatment, we were starting to make a tiny bit of headway when a coach made a suggestion to him that could have crippled him..
With every good intention in the world, this coach heard about his back pain and made the suggestion to move the float my patient was swimming with between his knees, higher up – because it had helped the coach with his own personal back pain.
As a non-injury specialist coach, and not privy to my patient’s medical history, he had no way of knowing why my patient had back pain.
He had no way of knowing that the seemingly helpful suggestion he had made would put immense pressure on the cage that had been surgically inserted into my patient’s spine – or that it was likely to put pressure on his nerves, which might paralyse him.
My patient wasn’t sure about the coaches suggestion, so fortunately asked before trying it – but he might easily not have done, which would have been dangerous for both him and the coach who suggested it..
Here’s the double edged sword :
Coaches are super helpful people. We want to see people improve. But sometimes our good intentions can be the source of more pain and suffering for the very people we’re trying to help.
That’s why I developed the Injury Hacking education series, to give coaches the confidence to be their helpful selves, without putting themselves or anyone else at risk..This is important because coaches just need someone to show them how they can best help someone in situations like this.
The moral of this story is clear: don’t offer advice about sports injuries.
Here’s how you can use this immediately:
Next time you hear someone mention pain that they’re having, remember this story and DON’T give the advice that immediately springs to your mind.
If you’d like to take this to the next level, I’d like to invite you to arm yourself with the knowledge and skills you need to be able to offer safe and effective advice, no matter what the circumstances. Get all the details here https://bit.ly/3tmZXC3