Effective communication between healthcare professionals and patients is key to a successful consultation and is reported to affect both adherence to treatment and outcome. Despite this evidence, research on how best to open consultations is limited and the optimal way, unknown. This study seeks the opinions of physiotherapists on how to open a clinical encounter in an adult musculoskeletal outpatient setting – a topic which has relevance to all clinicians aiming to build rapport with their patients. Forty clinical encounters between physiotherapists in a primary care setting and patients with back pain were observed and audio-recorded. The clinicians' key questions inviting the patient to discuss their back pain were identified, together with a content analysis of the topics discussed prior to the conversation about their back pain. In 2012, a national survey was undertaken, approaching 34,922 physiotherapists from 3 networks on the interactive website hosted by the professional body, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy asking participants to rank the data from clinical practice, to determine the preferred way to open a clinical encounter.Background and purpose of the study
Methods
This study surveys our patients to determine their experiences at airport security, establishes the detectability of common orthopaedic implants in an airport security scanner
A volunteer with metal implants strapped on and patients with implants in-situ walked through a gate scanner at a UK airport. Also, standard operating procedures at UK airports were ascertained.
There were 111 total knee replacements (TKR), 20 unicompartmental knee replacements (UKR), 2 bilateral UKR replacements, 17 bilateral TKR. Unlike previous studies from the U.K., virtually all patients with a TKR activated the gate scanner. Conversely, those with unicompartmental replacements did not. Patients are concerned about this possibility but are not informed at time of surgery and do not know what the procedures are if their implant is detected. The patient with the bilateral UKR did not set off the scanners where as the patient with the TKR did. A variety of surprisingly large trauma implants escaped detection.