Who is the Spine Scribe
As a young therapist I was shocked to see how my colleagues and the health system that we were a part of were treating patients with back pain. Most people living with back pain have no clue what is truly causing their pain. The reason for this is often that their doctors and therapists also have no clue. This leads patients to resign themselves to a life of pain, believing they are broken beyond repair.
Dealing with my own chronic illness, for which modern medicine had no answers, helped me to see the systemic failings of the health system I was a part of. The field of back pain is an unfortunate example of these broader problems. This recognition inspired me to be better. Due to my background and expertise, back pain became a field worth focusing my career on, knowing could make a difference in it.
A broader issue in the health and medical fields are that they have become "protocolised". The system is designed like a conveyor belt, where we tick boxes to send patients down the line, allowing us to swap the therapists or Doctors working the line in and out without anyone noticing. This system has some benefits but also has downsides. One of which being that we lose the skill of individual assessments.
We rarely treat and assess individuals anymore. When you see a therapist for back pain, more than likely they are going to follow the same "back pain protocol” they follow with all their patients. They rarely take the time to perform an accurate assessment of YOU and determine exactly what's causing YOUR pain. It is much easier to teach and repeat protocols than to treat individuals and give individualised therapy and advice.
Once a protocol is put in place for a particular treatment, it takes a huge amount of inertia to change it. Most people do not want to step out from the status quo, and the same is true of your health care professionals.
So how do we get out of pain? We need to break free of this inertia and get back to basics. With an understanding of the fundamental anatomy and biomechanics of the spine and how they relate to spinal pathologies, we can perform thorough investigations into the cause of your back pain and provide practical advice and therapy to reduce it.
Now, if you already have a therapist that does this, great. You're one of the lucky ones. But for most people out there, bouncing from therapist to therapist without ever being given a real answer as to what is causing your pain, let this blog be your own backdoor access to a back pain specialist that cares about treating the person, rather than the protocol. I want you to get off that conveyor belt and empower yourself with knowledge and understanding to live a life free of back pain.