Purple Periodical and Blog | Purple Co

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...]

Pruning the Rehab Tree

December 24, 2015 by Admin Leave a Comment

You may have read my last post where I discussed my lemon tree at length. I know how weird that sounds but I drew some pretty interesting parallels between how I treated a stinkbug infestation and how we currently manage rehab and claims. The key message is that if we continue to fixate solely on diagnosis, we miss a HUGE opportunity to do good rehab and help people get back to work. The diagnosis isn't as important as the person. The tricky part is that each person comes to us with a … [Read more...]

What Holistic Rehab Actually Means

December 15, 2015 by Admin Leave a Comment

I hope you don't mind if I talk about my lemon tree. It's only because it's the BEST example I've come across of what happens in holistic rehabilitation (and what happens if we don't do it properly). So I have this beautiful lemon tree in my backyard. The only problem is, it's infested with stinkbugs. Ever since the stinkbugs settled in, the tree is less fruitful; the leaves are sad and brown. Maybe this is the tree-equivalent of an L4-L5 disc bulge. Either way, the tree is NOT happy about … [Read more...]

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