Admin | Purple Co

Dear Dr Google

May 19, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

Continuing on the topic of medical information, opinion, and recovery, I want to talk about the medical information our clients get from a different kind of doctor. Dr. Google. Our clients are more informed and curious than ever before. Millions of resources about their condition or illness are available with one quick internet search. How many of us have worked with a client (or several) who bring their own research to meetings with us? How do you approach this? I'd argue that the … [Read more...]

The Health Benefits of Work in Action: A Case Study

April 15, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

Continuing on from my post last week about the barriers to making the health benefits of work a reality, I wanted to explore what happens for our clients whenit is a reality. One of the unfortunate side effects of providing rehabilitation for our clients is that normally we're asked to cease our involvement after a person returns to work. This means that we rarely get to see the positive effect that being back at work can have on a person's life. However myself and my team are lucky enough … [Read more...]

Making The Health Benefits of Work a Reality

April 15, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

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So... we've all heard a lot about the health benefits of work in recently, haven't we? As Rehabilitation Professionals, this isn't new information to us. We're all about helping our clients utilise good work as a tool to improved function and recovery. But... we all know that the "health benefits of work" isn't exactly an easy thing to implement. It does require a big change to get everyone on board with this new mindset and to actually implement it in a meaningful way that results in … [Read more...]

What’s The Deal with Chronic Pain?

April 15, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

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Guest post by Natalie Taylor, Rehabilitation Counsellor at Purple Co. So here's a can of worms: what's happening for a person with chronic pain? I had the opportunity to attend a chronic pain recovery workshop this weekend at NeurRa (Neuroscience Australia) facilitated by Prof. Kevin Vowles. For most of his career, Dr Vowles has been researching how we can help people with chronic pain get their lives back. There was one fundamental truth that kept presenting itself to me over the … [Read more...]

Why Post Cancer Fatigue is Real – yet Invisible

April 15, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

Picking up from last week's introduction to the nuances of post-cancer fatigue, let's get more specific: What is happening when a person with post-cancer fatigue reports cognitive deficits? And why is this so hard to detect? Cancer survivors often report cognitive symptoms such as difficulty concentrating or forgetfulness. And yet, the level of dysfunction that clients report is often more severe than what is detected in neuropsychological tests. And so we have a case where reported … [Read more...]

Working with Post-Cancer Fatigue

March 10, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

"Fatigue" is a controversial topic. In the rehabilitation field, we are increasingly working with people who are grappling with the effects of primary fatigue or fatigue secondary to another illness. And it's the kind of thing that often gets swept under the rug or delegitimised, sometimes unknowingly, by the general public and even health professionals. Everybody seems to have their own opinions about fatigue, how to manage it, and whether it's even real, but for the people who … [Read more...]

Why Medical Opinion is King

February 18, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

A reflective post from me today. I've been talking on the Purple Co blog recently about what it means when we try to pursue a medical certification of "fitness" for our clients - and how this determination can affect outcomes. Today I wanted to discuss the fact that the pendulum swings both ways. In terms of claims management, medical opinion is king. And often, the same is true for our clients. The disconnect occurs when medical opinion stops being able to present solutions to help … [Read more...]

Why Medical Certification of Capacity Rarely Leads to Change

February 3, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

In last week's post I wrote about how uncertainty around change (and an absence of planning for change) makes many of our clients feel stuck. Stuck in their injury, illness or disability and worried that this is how it's always going to be. I want to explore how we still chase down medical certification as a way of bringing about change and helping our clients improve their function. Do you ever wonder why it rarely works? Why do many of our clients with a certified capacity for work … [Read more...]

Why Flare-Up Management is Crucial for Good Rehab

February 3, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

In my series of posts on the evolution of rehab, I explored how various approaches lead to very different outcomes for our clients. In particular, in my 20 years' experience, prescriptive rehab that focuses on very rapid outcomes tends to have higher rates of recidivism. Obviously, this is no good for anyone involved. Poor flare-up management is at the core of this problem. The illnesses that our clients present with are now more chronic in nature, often with a natural pattern of … [Read more...]

Check Your Attitude!

January 6, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

I wrote last time about how important it is to check in with our clients about their attitudes - about their illness or injury, the idea of recovery and one day returning to work. But what about our attitudes? There has been a lot of interest lately in how the attitudes of treating professionals impact on their patients' outcomes. In some ways, a health professional's expectations and beliefs about a client can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. How we convey our beliefs about our … [Read more...]

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