What’s Your Scope?: Avoid Presenting Yourself As Having Expertise That You Don’t

-In working sports massage with the Boise Burn, I am fascinated how a team can work together to achieve a goal, each team member having just the right job.  In just the opposite way it would be catastrophic if I jumped out and tried to play referee for the game (although some of you fans [...]

What’s Your Scope?: Tip 2

Massage therapists don’t diagnose, and officially, we don’t do “evaluations.”  But Massage Therapists MUST be able to assess and critically think through the relative condition of each patient/client that they see.  We make observations that facilitate our treatments, and sometimes these observations help illuminate the overall condition.  Communicate with the health care provider who referred [...]

What’s Your Scope?

Recently I grazed across an article in Massage and Bodywork concerning how to best define what a body worker’s scope of practice is.  As a Massage Therapy provider with a relatively new role in the Health Care Field, it is crucial that I understand and effectively define what my scope of practice is.  After One [...]

Lymphedema: Denial and Rebellion- It’s Only Human Nature

The human mind is an amazing thing.  Its ability to fool even itself to the detriment of the person is truly astounding.  I see it on a daily basis when dealing with Lymphedema patients.  The two I run into are denial and rebellion. 

Denial #1: “I’m the exception to the rule!” Unfortunately there is no [...]

Snapping Hip Syndrome

Your outfit should be snappy, not your hips.  Unfortunately with marathon season underway that is exactly what ends up happening in many recreational runners.  Robie Creek anyone?
            Many runners begin feeling a snapping, popping or sometimes a painful sensation in their hips whenever they run, squat or stand up.  This is because tendons of the [...]

National Occupational Therapy Month!

SLIERS would like to reccognize our wonderful Occupational Therapists!  April is National Occupational Therapy Month, and all of the hard working OTs deserve to be recognized!  If you are not a SLIERSian, or have not be an Occupational Therapy patient, you may not know what OT is.  Here is a general definition:
“ Occupational therapy is skilled treatment that [...]

Lymphedema: Two Tips to Start Out

The first time I see a patient is for the evaluation.  At the end of the evaluation I give my patients a packet of information to take home and read, instruct them in the Anatomy and Physiology of the Lymph System, and give them two things to get a head start on before we initiate [...]

Trampolines: Jump into summer and not the ER

Spring is in the air and so are little kids – when they jump on trampolines that is.  They may be fun, but they can also cause some major injuries.  To avoid injures you should NEVER let more than one person jump at a time.  If there is more than one person, the lighter of [...]

Neosporin Allergy

Knicks and cuts are a part of everyday life; cutting veggies for supper, yard work, kids falling and scraping their knees are all very common this time of year.  Cleaning the area and using medication are an important part of taking care of these cuts, so they don’t get infected.  Often, we go to the [...]

AAC Camp

Wearing a cowboy hat and blue bandanna, 11-year-old Austin delivered a line from a play he’d been working on all week.
“I grabbed the snake and threw it far away, and I’m still here today,” he said.
The audience laughed. Austin smiled. And his mother, peering through the lens of a video camera, beamed. Austin, who has [...]