Every month the Physiopedia team focus on updating pages centered around one topic. This enables us to keep improving all of our existing pages as well as create new ones. The team often make changes to referencing and formatting but best of all they find the latest evidence and update the pages accordingly. This month the topic is Primary Contact.
This month TOTM is slightly different as it is stretching across both December and January, so it being half way through it’s a good time to check in on those updated pages.
First of all you might be asking what we mean by primary contact and to be honest it can mean a couple of things. In our category and within Physiopedia we mean one thing only – top quality assessment skills and diagnostic reasoning. This is because a primary contact physiotherapist is the first point of contact a patient presents to for their problem; usually movement or pain related. Therefore within this compilation of pages you will be able to find everything relating to assessment, screening tools, differential diagnosis in practice, adjunct medical & first aid interventions and specific physiotherapy treatment guidelines relevant to working as a primary contact clinician.
Primary contact physiotherapists can be found within all sectors of the profession depending on the country’s health system. For example, in Australia, no referral or pre-assessment is needed to make an appointment to see a physiotherapist in private practice therefore that appointment will be the primary contact with the patient. In the UK there are training programmes being developed as well as pilot services being tested to explore the first contact role.
It’s an exciting job and don’t forget it isn’t just exclusively for those of us that work within MSK-fields. Respiratory, frailty, falls and mental health are just a number of other specialities which are developing this field too. Make sure you take a look at our pages to get ahead of the game!