Getting Patients Onto Their HEP

It doesn't have to be difficult or time consuming to better engage patients

We've spoken to a lot of physiotherapy patients in a mission to understand why the overwhelming majority had major issues with exercise adherence.

Among our findings were,

Patients left the clinic highly motivated and resolving to do their exercises
Lack of confidence at home
Hazy memory or forgetful of specific instructions
Just plain forgetting to do their HEP
Fear of pain that causes further damage (important to note, not a fear of work)

Curiously we didn't see many examples of 'hard' blocks, situations where patients simply could not do their exercises. We also found physiotherapists are exceptionally adept at crafting HEPs to suit patients circumstances and needs.

Some clinicians we spoke with were able to smoothen out the HEP experience by applying these innovative techniques to their practice,

Record patients doing their exercise. The traditional model of sending videos to patients of good looking models doing an exercise that roughly matches what they should do along with modifier instructions simply does not work. Research shows (and from our experience) patients have higher engagement and greater recall of their exercises when they have a video of themselves doing it. This comes with the added bonus of saving you time finding exercises and writing modifier instructions.
Reminder to do HEP. There's a funny thing about humans who will not do an important task simply because it's not a structured part of their day. Using reminders, particularly through app push notifications or SMS at convenient times can help keep patients accountable and pro-active.
Stay on target, show progress. Outcome measures are not just for clinicians, often progress (particularly in complex and difficult rehab cases) is a slow and arduous process. Patients may lose sight of the forest for the trees, by showing meaningful progress in both objective and subjective measures such as range of motion or opening jars can go a long way.
Have your patients back, even outside the clinic. This is a funny one, clinicians are often worried about the time burden of out of clinic availability. Clinicians told us when they make themselves readily available through an asynchronous chat platform (text messages, whatsapp), patients were not more likely to communicate with them but they were more likely to do their HEP. We believe the knowledge of their being a clinician within easy reach is enough for patients to have the confidence and support they need to persevere.

With the correct combination of tools to practice these modifications you can not only improve patient engagement but reduce your clinical workload.

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This article was supported by AI and written by a human. Verify authenticity at gptzero.me.

Getting Patients Onto Their HEP

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