Social media is essentially the library of the 21st century, allowing us to accumulate knowledge and better ourselves as clinicians at the touch of a button. But, at the same time, it is a very deep rabbit hole that is extremely hard to navigate. We live in a time where you can find blog posts, watch Instagram or Snapchat videos, and find links on Twitter 24/7, 365. And for the most part, this is a great thing.
However, it appears that with more and more platforms available for people to express their ideas, it becomes harder to wade through the muck because it can be overwhelming at times. I know I’ve seen a ton of exercises and interventions via social media that I now utilize on a daily basis. Are these exercises based on evidence? Not really. Is the self-mob following the convex-concave rule for the targeted joint? Probably, but I’d follow up with my own question, Does it matter?
Nevertheless, we use what gets us results, and I’ve found some amazing interventions on social media and I plan on using them irregardless of whether there’s research to back it up or not.
Point is, if we only utilize interventions and exercises that are validated with randomized controlled trials or meta analyses, we’re limiting ourselves tremendously and, to be quite honest, probably all delivering the same level of service on a daily basis. Evidence is important to use as a guiding principle when educating the population on incidence of pathology, providing causation/correlation for risk factors to a specific disease/condition, and so on. But what we forget to lean on too often is the fact that there are clinicians out there with years of experience treating tens of thousands of patients and have seen first hand, in the trenches, what’s effective and what’s not. And if we ignore the knowledge that’s being shared with us just because there isn’t evidence behind it, we’re really doing our patients a disservice. Also, evidence tends to be significantly behind current practice and really just needs time to catch up.
I’m not here to prove that evidence doesn’t matter and that the literature is pointless. Far from it. I have changed as a clinician every year since I began practicing 6 years ago. I don’t do half of the things I learned in school for a variety of reasons, but one main reason is that I’ve learned and seen interventions that just work better for ME. And if I can provide effective care in a more efficient manner, I have to do it. There are so many innovative clinicians out there and I wouldn’t be challenging myself to be a better PT if I sat and waited for the evidence to catch up.
So my advice: if you see a blog post or video of an intervention or exercise that you can implement into practice and immediately (and safely) help your clients with, do it. Use the evidence accordingly and always make sure your treatment “principles” are guided by the wealth of resources available to us across all platforms.
Ziad Dahdul 