Comment

Comment by indikate on March 30, 2012 at 7:56pm

I like the theory, but I have some reservations about this method. A little didactic and insistent in tone and therein lies the rub. How do we know that the tissues need all this movement applied to them without listening to them first?

Comment by Small Fry on September 6, 2011 at 10:11pm

Steve, I don't believe litigation is the problem here.  In any case I see no evidence that sticking to musculoskeletal medicine theory will prevent that.

The USA has a different legal environment, where the loser doesn't pay the winner's costs.  That means there is nothing to lose by trying to sue somebody over there.  Send out enough scary letters, somebody may cave.  Send one to the osteopath, one to the principle, the receptionist, the plinth manufacturer, the lady who waters the rubber plant, one of them may just decide to settle because they can't afford to go to court.  If you have to take them all to court, you have nothing to lose but your own costs, and everything to gain.

In Britain we have loser pays, which means don't try it unless you have a solid case.  What less solid case is there than a critically ill patient who loses the fight and dies?  So the osteopath 'drained his lymph'?  There'd be a far stronger case against the catering department in most hospitals I've seen.

For us it's startling a patient with an unexpected neck thrust that's a stickier wicket.  For medics it's 'accidents' such as amputating the wrong leg.  Fortunately osteopaths do not inhabit a world where a decimal point can kill.

Call this a cynical perspective on responsibility, it is not.  My point is that helping people takes courage, so does being helped, but our fear should not be the thing that stands in the way if we know how to make things better: that's failure in ones capacity as a human being.

Moreover, when practitioners get involved in this sort of care, the hunger in the patient to recover has amazed, the turnaround can be impressive.  There is usually something useful we can add and it needn't mean jumping up and down on them.

I suspect the main reason osteopaths are not engaged in this work is that we don't have jobs in hospitals.  These cases don't come to us, we have to go to them.  It's stressful, tiring and tedious, it doesn't fit to convenient hours, and it doesn't pay.

Comment by Mervyn Waldman on August 22, 2011 at 6:02pm

The key point, Steve, is never treat without informed consent from the patient and preferably their nearest and dearest.

Under those circumstances and with a willingness, if need be, to justify one's medical efforts scientifically, then I believe we have never been in a better position historically to be given a fair hearing in any court of law.

The alternative, in my opinion, is a decline to little more than physios who manipulate or massage therapists.

 

 

Comment by Steve on August 20, 2011 at 2:23pm

Mervyn asks us why osteopaths have not taken up the challenge of treating the acutely ill. The answer can be summed up in one word: LITIGATION.

 

Listen to the story Mervyn recounts, about treating his friend with pneumonia. He feels in retrospect he may have overtreated his friend and possibly hastened the latter's demise.

 

Now, imagine he had been working in the UK, treating a card-carrying customer who was paying (or his family were paying) for bedside treatment. Imagine, further, that one family member was hostile to the whole idea but had been overruled by the patient. The patient's death is accelerated rather than postponed by overtreatment. The hostile family member would almost certainly have sued Mervyn up to the eyeballs, no doubt aided and abetted by the patient's GP and/or hospital consultant - and indeed the case may well have ended up in the pages of The Guardian with the inevitable commentary by Edzard Ernst decrying the use of quackery in severe illness.

 

Yes, we can use osteopathy for severe illness in our nearest and dearest. But using it on paying customers is another matter entirely.

 

While I totally agree with Mervyn that we have lost the full scope of osteopathy, we may have to face the fact that we will never regain all this lost ground in our litigation-happy country. Nevertheless, surely we can at least broaden the scope of osteopathy to include non life-threatening functional problems.

community team Comment by Ronan O'Brien on May 23, 2011 at 10:23pm

 

We do not provide support to download the video. It is provided for free non-commerical use via Sacral Musings to watch. 

Comment by Franki Rocher Muñoz on May 22, 2011 at 11:30am

please, some instruction to download this video?

Comment by Bill on April 26, 2011 at 8:11pm

Thanks for sharing this recording Ronan. The last 10 minutes or so showed osteopathy as that hypnotic blend of movement and treatment that impresses patients much more than "revalidation" ever will. Who wouldn't want to swap places with that little girl :-)

More like this please ...