Embracing Risk In Rehab: Don’t Wait Until Patients Are “Ready”

One of the most effective ways to potentially create lifelong patients who remain dependent on the medical system is advising them to completely avoid the things they enjoy doing until they are totally “ready”. The problem with this advice is that seldom do sports medicine professionals ever actually define what constitutes readiness. To be fair, readiness can be a difficult concept to satisfactorily operationalize. Often though, avoidance as a blanket treatment strategy is risk aversion and evasion of professional responsibility masquerading as patient advocacy and safety. The idea here is that nothing can go wrong if people who like running, as an example, are told to no longer run. This line of reasoning can backfire, however, because the longer people put off their preferred activities the more elusive and seemingly unimaginable these tasks become. Since eighties action movies provide profound insights into how to confront timeless problems, we need look no further than to Viper, Commander of the Navy Fighter Weapons School from the movie “Top Gun”. After Goose dies in a training accident, Viper recommends that Maverick, the pilot at the controls during the incident, immediately return to the cockpit upon the completion of the investigative proceedings. Viper knew that the longer Maverick abstained from flying, the harder it would be for Maverick to “get back in the saddle”.

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