I follow lots of stroke survivor blogs but only one therapist other than Pete Levine and that is Toni, she is a neuro therapist and works mainly with stroke patients and has wonderful insights.
http://community.advanceweb.com/blogs/pt_2/default.aspx?p=2
She talks about evidence based therapy vs. clinical experience. You as a patient should know the distinction because if your therapist can only use evidence-based therapy then they may not be able to point you to clinical trials in Phase I or II. Toni only seems to need to do that for classes. The more you know the better you will make your therapists. Consider it on-the-job training.
From Toni:
Every course I've taken has required me to produce evidence to support my interventions. I could use clinical experience to decide which intervention but not to support my decision. My experience with the treatment could not be cited. Unless I had a study supporting my decision, the intervention was acceptable.
There are two schools of thought. One stresses the evidence over everything else. The other ignores the evidence and relies on what has worked in the past. Ideally we want a patient-focused happy medium. Somewhere along the line, clinical experience came to be looked down on because it is intangible and not always reproducible. Skill level has an effect on this. Someone who is skilled in a technique is going to have better outcomes than someone just learning it.
The best therapy I got was at a hospital connected to a university. To be specific, It was The health and Sciences Center of the University of Colorado. My therapist would go to the university library and read jourals, come over to the hospital and discuss her thoughts with the PT doctor, and then apply what she learned in my sessions. It was wonderful. I got out of the plastic brace on my leg and medicine dosage was reduced.
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