Remember you do make a difference

Working in short term rehab can definitely have its challenges. Between difficult residents, difficult families, or difficult insurance carriers, life can be challenging. Sometimes you can just feel like you are just spinning your wheels.

Difficult residents come in many forms

It could be the resident that just always needs to be coaxed into participating. It could be the one that you just never know when or if they will participate. These are always the ones that seem to mess up the flow of the whole day.

Another type is the ones that are never ready. These can be really mess up your timing of the day. It’s ” wait I need this, or can you get that for me, or I need to call someone first.” These residents can be very challenging when the delay tactics continue right into the Therapy room. It could be needing a sweater, or something to drink other than the water that is right there. They make the treatment feel twice as long as you run around like crazy trying to stay on time and focused on treatment.

Difficult families

There are times where families can derail your day. Some families can be overwhelming and at times unreasonable. We all have dealt with them at some point. Unfortunately many times the families have not accepted the fact that their loved one will probably not return back to their prior level of functioning. This is especially true when there is cognitive impairment that was hidden through compensation at home. They don’t realize or understand that mom or dad were not safe for a while now. Their true colors are being shown by being outside of their comfort zone

Sometimes the injury or illness is so impact full that they will not be able to return back to “but they were all alone and still driving”. Sometimes we are just trying to get as much back as we can.

Sometimes it can be real challenge when families don’t understand how insurance works. Some only hear the magic words of 20 days or a hundred days. They don’t really understand that there are criteria to meet to continue skilled therapy.

Difficult insurance

With the proliferation of Medicare advantage plans it can be frustrating at times with the managed care aspects of these insurances.

There are times where we as therapists truely believe that the resident still has realistic progress to make and the insurance company will issue a cut letter. As much as we can be advocates for our residents, it winds up being out of our control.

At the end of the day…..

At the end of the day we need to take a deep breath and look in the mirror. “Did I improve someone’s life in some capacity?” If you can honestly say that you made a positive impact on someone’s life today, I think that is a truely remarkable day. We need to be reminded of that sometimes when the chaos of the day and the difficult situations have us feeling down. We got into therapy to help people. Even if that help is only making someone smile in a bad situation you are successful for the day. Time to hit a reset and start again tomorrow to make a difference. You have the power of change in your hands and your knowledge. Now go out and use it.