When is the last time you read about love and treating clients that wasn't about boundaries and ethics?
Have you ever read about love and how to utilize love in clinical relationships?
I haven't.
Yet the majority of people claim some belief in a higher power and over 50% a belief in a god. Most of those beliefs coalesce around values to include compassion, love and caring. So why aren't we as professionals talking about how those core personal beliefs concretely and directly impact our work moment to moment with the client? How can PT's talk about the "The Art of Caring" and then only exhort p-values?
I am asserting you don't have to like all of your clients….but you do have to love everyone of them.
Same goes for your co-workers and 3rd party intermediaries.
Anything less and you are practicing with a serious break in your personal integrity….unless of course you are one of those who don't think love has anything to do with it.
To practice from that perspective is very difficult. The principle is simple. I work at every day and fail at it multiple times a day. So I get up and try it again the next day.
And I laugh at me…because after all, if I can't love my human imperfections, no one else has a chance.
Love matters. Period.
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Tags: art of caring, love, physical therapy, rehabilitation
Hey Matt,
Isn’t there a song that goes something like…what does love have to do with it…have to do with it….. Anyway, G. Vaynerchuck has a universal point of view. Any business that will excel, requires strong energy of caring. That is what brings people to the company.
The strong energy I speak of is passion. Passion is what the individual therapist needs to supply. Mark McCormack, author of The 110% Solution, provided common denominator success thoughts and behaviors from his superstar clients. He ended the book with this: “…Passion–that is something I cannot provide you with…only you can do that!” It saddens me when therapists get burned out and they throw in the towel. They stop caring. I think it is from feeling defeated by company demands both insurance and employers. There is another type of professionals that do not care. People who are in the wrong profession. They should not be a therapist, but need to “keep the job.” Personally, I hate to see that!
yes that’s an old Tina Turner tune from before your time : )
I’d suggest that many that might appear to “not care” have just gone “comfortably numb” per my first post by the same name…the current systems have generated so much pressure to produce over relate that it is the only strategy many have to survive. Those are the therapist I hope to offer a way out and to reignite their passion to create the burn necessary to get substantive transformation (vs “reform”) in our systems. They are hurting and it’s my mission to relieve their suffering by offering a way to change.
thanks for posting Jeff!
I like what you have done with the new website design!