Manual Assessment Skills
Palpation is a critical skill and provides a significant amount of information during each patient interaction. When was the last time you practiced your palpation? When was the last time you received feedback on your palpation? The skill of palpation is a perishable skill that many of us have undervalued and under appreciated because we don’t realize the importance until well into our career – don’t make those same mistakes. This course will review/cover the skills of palpating and include practice accompanied by individual feedback.
Additionally, we will dive into assessing tissue quality (in general, focused, and scar tissue) and you will be introduced to a systematic approach to tissue quality assessment. Tissue quality can contribute to to pain, swelling, loss of range of motion, decreased tissue extensibility, poor movement behaviors and force production deficits. Later in rehab, tissue quality problems can appear during deceleration drills and when we begin to reintegrate athletes back into their sport as “pain” that seemingly has no source… This course will present a novel approach to objectively(ish) assess tissue quality and make this clinically relevant over the duration of a patients rehab duration.
Finally, Range of Motion (ROM) testing is part of almost every assessment. This course will introduce you to an approach that will provide you with more information from this testing than just a number. Knowing that a patient is lacking 5 degrees of knee extension is good, and is necessary to show clinical improvement BUT that alone does not give you any insight into what is actually limiting that motion – it is just a number. Without adding any time or new component to your ROM assessment, this course will uncover the clinically critical information you are missing out on.
CEU Requirements:
At the conclusion of the course – once you have completed the course work, passed the skill testing and completed the exit assessment (YES, YOU HAVE TO DO ALL 3) you will receive 8 Category A CEU.
Knowledge Gap:
Palpation is s skill taught to every Healthcare Providers (HCP) during the early years of their formal training/education. But, like every skill, it is perishable. Once HCP’s enter the work force, while this skill is often required every day, there is no further training, feedback, or assessment of these skills. It is very common for drift to occur (drift occurs as a result of a series of small things, each insignificant on its own, the total of which have a cumulative impact. Over time, a formerly high-performing individual can lose focus and capabilities without anyone recognizing what is happening). This course will return each attendee to the foundational skill set of palpation, tissue assessment, and other manual assessment skills and then build off of this with their level of professional clinical experience to develop enhanced manual assessment skills.
Learning Objectives:
- Attendees will be provided an objective awareness of where their manual skills set reside
- Attendees will gain insight into simple practices that can maintain/enhance their manual skills.
- Attendees will be able to execute a systemic tissue mobility/pliability assessment of any soft tissue.
Clinical Bottom Line:
In the “real-world”, professionals often lack the opportunity and/or resources to be assessed and provided feedback on their existing skill sets. The first step in preventing drift of these foundational skills is developing a high degree of self-awareness; each individual needs to undergo an assessment of the most basic palpation skills. Once self-awareness is accomplished, either existing skills can be improved, or new skills can be learned.
Course Instructor
