Your team

Your Team

Matthew Jennings
Physiotherapist
Liverpool Hospital, NSW

The needs of the patient are very individual. So there will be one person with rheumatoid arthritis who manages their condition extremely well and is very comfortable talking about their life goals, deals well with pain, has an ability to be maintaining themselves in a workforce or functioning at a high level. And another patient may have higher needs that need a lot more support with pain management, need a lot more advice or input from a medical team in terms of maintaining their function.

So I don’t think the disease itself defines it; I think it’s really down to an individual’s needs. I think it’s the individuals who has a very clear picture of what they would like to achieve and their expectations for their life, and it’s how they work with their medical team or their healthcare team in terms of trying to set themselves up so that they can, I suppose, optimise their quality of life and move forward. As a patient you need to be thinking, this is what is important to me; these are the issues that I’m having, and you need to be able to communicate that with your healthcare professional. The healthcare professionals that are involved then have the responsibility to work together to actually help you get to that endpoint. One of the things that I see as a big issue is that consistent messaging. So we may have someone who comes to see me who is very, very clear on a particular goal; being able to say get to the park again and go play with their grandchildren.

But then an individual’s goal from a medical perspective may be to get certain markers down or inflammatory markers, maintain the medication balance. If they misunderstand our intentions and how that fits together in terms of achieving their goal, then that’s when we start to have a little bit of conflict or a little bit less of that working together type of atmosphere. So for a team to work together around that it is very critical. As a patient you’re responsible really in terms of being comfortable at communicating your needs, your goals.

If you don’t understand something with regards to your care, you need to be talking to your healthcare professional about that. If you feel uncomfortable taking a certain medication you need to discuss that with your doctor. If you feel that exercising in a particular way is not giving you the benefits or if it’s making you uncomfortable or you don’t feel that that’s really important to you, then you’ll likely to stop doing that activity. It’s something you need to work with those people. There may be other options, there’s other ideas. You can design a programme in terms of trying to meet your needs so that you’re actually participating.

I think the patient does need to communicate to that team. There are times when a doctor or a healthcare professional will want to give you very specific advice and that advice is based on what is known likely to be the best for you. If you are not comfortable with that then their responsibilities is we discussed the risks or we discuss the pros and cons of different treatments. But there is no magic answer. It’s about putting those things together. It’s about working with you so that you know that you can maximise your quality of life, manage your disease the best way possible.