Shownotes
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As physiotherapist’s getting stuck is a regular part of our clinical experience. It’s part of the job.
We’re problem-solving and troubleshooting with every patient we see. The problems we’re solving are complex and change regularly. Whether it’s establishing a diagnosis, or troubleshooting a patient that isn’t progressing, we need to figure out how to help get the best possible outcomes for patients. It can be frustrating and tiring and we need a way to gain clarity in our thinking.
In this episode, I'm going to be talking about a unique way to help you get unstuck with your clinical reasoning. First start by listening to this episode, afterwards head to my blog so you can see a few clinical examples of how I problem solve and create clearer thinking pathways.
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Transcripts
Welcome to the unleash, your best clinical self podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, Andrew.
Speaker:Copy on.
Speaker:If you're a physiotherapist or other movement professional, who
Speaker:feels like you're stuck in a rut.
Speaker:And my podcast is for you.
Speaker:This podcast is focused on helping you move from frustration to
Speaker:flow in your clinical practice.
Speaker:And each episode I'll share strategies, approaches, and my latest thinking on
Speaker:how to improve your clinical performance.
Speaker:So you keep loving what you do.
Speaker:This is episode number 67.
Speaker:And in this episode, I'm going to be talking about a unique way to help you
Speaker:get unstuck with your clinical reasoning.
Speaker:I also wanted to let you know that I have a newsletter where I dive
Speaker:into topics relating to improving clinical performance, head over
Speaker:to 360 clinician.com to sign up.
Speaker:Before I dive in, I want to share a message from this
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Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Let's get started.
Speaker:I was thinking about the topic of how we can get stuck in life.
Speaker:And as I was thinking about this topic around how he gets stuck in work and
Speaker:life, It got me thinking about this experience I had as a teenager.
Speaker:My younger brother and I, we loved hiking and we did a lot of
Speaker:hiking in the cascade mountains.
Speaker:Unfortunately the only vehicle we had was our parents Ford Taurus.
Speaker:Not exactly a great vehicle for driving on rutted forestry roads.
Speaker:And one time we had set our sights on this really popular mountain.,
Speaker:that we wanted to check out.
Speaker:And we needed to venture on this new forest service road.
Speaker:And we were doing pretty good to time-wise we're, you know,
Speaker:we're getting pretty excited that we're making some good headway.
Speaker:And unfortunately we hit this section where there was a,
Speaker:the road was a bit washed out.
Speaker:It was a deep washboard.
Speaker:And for some reason, we thought that we could actually make it
Speaker:across this with our vehicle.
Speaker:Unfortunately, we got stuck.
Speaker:We had to try to, you know, moved in forward got into reverse.
Speaker:We're sort of rocking back and forth.
Speaker:Couldn't make it work.
Speaker:We had to get out.
Speaker:We had to push the vehicle.
Speaker:Thankfully, we got the vehicle unstuck.
Speaker:And made it back home.
Speaker:Unfortunately it did quite a number on the transmission.
Speaker:And I think the transmission actually had to be replaced at some
Speaker:point down the road there, which my parents were not too thrilled about.
Speaker:Now, when I think about getting unstuck and our work as a healthcare provider,
Speaker:you know, I feel as a physiotherapist, getting stuck oftentimes can feel like a
Speaker:regular part of our clinical experience.
Speaker:It almost feels like part of the job description.
Speaker:You know, we're problem solving.
Speaker:We're troubleshooting with every patient we see.
Speaker:And sometimes these problems can be complex.
Speaker:There's a lot of variables we're dealing with in terms of
Speaker:getting people moving better.
Speaker:Whether it's establishing a diagnosis that feels murky.
Speaker:Or troubleshooting a patient that isn't progressing.
Speaker:I think that there's just so many of these scenarios where we can feel stuck in our
Speaker:thinking and not really know how to.
Speaker:Navigate things.
Speaker:And it can really be frustrating and tiring.
Speaker:And we do need a way to gain clarity in our thinking.
Speaker:Now, obviously having a conversation with a colleague or peer can be a great way
Speaker:to gain clarity, but sometimes we just don't have access to talk to someone.
Speaker:And when we're stuck in our thinking, it's easy to believe that we just don't
Speaker:have enough information to get us through.
Speaker:But what I found in my own experience that it's more often are our
Speaker:ability to gain fresh perspective that helps us to get unstuck.
Speaker:But that's the billion dollar question.
Speaker:How do we gain more perspective?
Speaker:It's just seems elusive.
Speaker:The good news is that I've been experimenting over the last few
Speaker:years with a way to help get unstuck.
Speaker:And it's really the idea of using visual thinking, otherwise known
Speaker:as doodling to help gain clarity with your clinical reasoning.
Speaker:For many of us, doodling is simply a way to pass the time.
Speaker:However, I think what many of us don't think about is that doodling can actually
Speaker:help us improve how we reason clinically.
Speaker:And I found that doodling has been a really powerful way in my own clinical
Speaker:toolkit to sharpen my thinking.
Speaker:Improve my clinical reasoning and accelerate problem solving.
Speaker:Research by Riding in 2009 and Ainsworth in 2011.
Speaker:They showed that doodling is a method that engages different areas of
Speaker:the brain to support concentration, memory, and problem solving.
Speaker:So let's first talk about what is doodling.
Speaker:When I started to dig into this, it's interesting to see what the
Speaker:current definitions of doodling are.
Speaker:And truthfully, they don't really shine a very positive light
Speaker:on this powerful technique.
Speaker:Merriam Webster defines it as an aimless or casual scribble design or sketch.
Speaker:And Wikipedia defines it as drawing made while a person's
Speaker:attention is otherwise occupied.
Speaker:Not too flattering.
Speaker:There's a book by Sunni brown, called the doodle revolution.
Speaker:And she felt like there was a lot missing when it came to
Speaker:the definition of doodling.
Speaker:And her revised definition of doodling.
Speaker:One that I literally like is quote, making spontaneous marks
Speaker:to help yourself think end quote.
Speaker:And I love that definition because I think what it does is it allows it to.
Speaker:Become accessible to non-artists.
Speaker:Anyone can make marks on a piece of paper.
Speaker:And I love the purpose of doodling as she defines it to help yourself think,
Speaker:I think that's key regardless of how one doodles or how good it looks.
Speaker:The key is to help us think.
Speaker:We're always thinking as clinicians, there aren't many things that we
Speaker:are using though, to help us think better, especially something that's
Speaker:accessible at any moment in our day.
Speaker:So as I was thinking about doodling and this podcast and what I've been
Speaker:writing about doodling, I think there's five ways that Doolin can help us
Speaker:improve our clinical performance.
Speaker:So number one, it gives our mind space to process.
Speaker:I like to think of doodling as a form of journaling that is more
Speaker:visual but less structured.
Speaker:It's a way to draw out our thoughts and ideas in the moment.
Speaker:What I love about is it slows everything down.
Speaker:It gives the mind space to pause, reflect, and process information
Speaker:without feeling the pressure to come up with an answer right away.
Speaker:And doodling is known to be an effective aid and problem solving because what it
Speaker:does is it helps us to break away from traditional thinking ruts and really
Speaker:opens us up to more creative solutions.
Speaker:Making marks on a piece of paper or a tablet.
Speaker:Engages multiple centers, the brain that allows you to look at
Speaker:a problem from different angles.
Speaker:And allows you to come up with ideas then to think about that you
Speaker:maybe haven't considered before.
Speaker:Number two, it helps you to get out of your head.
Speaker:It's easy to fall into the trap of mulling problems over in one's head.
Speaker:Promise just keep running around in our brains without any progress or conclusion.
Speaker:It's really inefficient and time consuming at the end of the day.
Speaker:But there's something transformative when we can get our thinking out of
Speaker:our heads and onto a piece of paper.
Speaker:And I just find that fresh perspective just comes so much more
Speaker:quickly with doodling than going down those same thinking pathways.
Speaker:Number three.
Speaker:It helps you to see things differently.
Speaker:To solve problems effectively.
Speaker:We do need to see things differently.
Speaker:I found that doodling helps me to see clinical situations in new ways.
Speaker:When I get those key data points from my evaluation about a patient case
Speaker:onto a piece of paper, it allows me to see those potential connections
Speaker:way more, easily and quickly.
Speaker:The process of doodling allows some parts of our brains to relax.
Speaker:So we can tap into other, maybe less used areas of our brains, which
Speaker:ultimately help us to see a problem from a different vantage point.
Speaker:And I would argue that doodling regularly just helps us to
Speaker:retain information better.
Speaker:It helps us to develop that muscle of problem solving.
Speaker:That much more quickly.
Speaker:Number four.
Speaker:It helps you to slow down.
Speaker:Research by Andrati in 2009.
Speaker:They did some research looking at doodling and what they found was
Speaker:that doodling helps to stabilize arousal at an optimal level to
Speaker:support concentration and thinking.
Speaker:And a CML in 2016, that research showed that, doodling helped to reduce
Speaker:stress as measured by cortisol levels.
Speaker:If a stress hormones are high, then our ability to think gets clouded.
Speaker:And so doodling helps us to slow down, allowing us to be able to be
Speaker:in that optimal place of thinking.
Speaker:Number five, it can reveal unexpected connections.
Speaker:When my mind is stuck, I find that it's easy to get fixated on one
Speaker:way of thinking or seeing or doing.
Speaker:When I'm doodling, I often find connections and ideas that I just
Speaker:wouldn't have come up with before.
Speaker:These unexpected connections can help to build on my existing
Speaker:thought processes and really helped me to see the bigger picture.
Speaker:And when you doodle, you're engaging in deep and important information processing.
Speaker:As Sunni brown shares, it's all about connecting neurological pathways with
Speaker:previously disconnected pathways.
Speaker:And she said, when you're concentrating intently, sifting through
Speaker:information conscious and otherwise.
Speaker:You have the opportunity to generate massive insights.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So in quick summary, the five ways that doodling can help
Speaker:improve your clinical performance.
Speaker:It gives you that mental space to process.
Speaker:It helps you to get out of your head.
Speaker:It helps you to see things differently.
Speaker:It helps you to slow down and it helps you to reveal connections.
Speaker:Now, the question you may have now is, well, how do I apply
Speaker:doodling to clinical reasoning?
Speaker:First off, I don't think there's any need to have skill in drawing.
Speaker:Doodling is not about creating realistic impressions of your
Speaker:patients or their body parts.
Speaker:It's about helping you think.
Speaker:The doodles you create are for you and you alone.
Speaker:Another thing I always remind myself is the outcome isn't
Speaker:about how pretty it looks.
Speaker:I think we all have this inner critic and unfortunately it becomes very
Speaker:alive and well when it comes to any kind of artistic or creative endeavor.
Speaker:If you find yourself being critical of your doodles, just gently
Speaker:remind yourself this isn't art.
Speaker:This is just to help me think.
Speaker:Another thing I like to do is to keep things simple.
Speaker:When doodling to solve clinical problems, I found that it's helpful
Speaker:to keep the shapes and doodle simple.
Speaker:I like to focus on using simple stick figures.
Speaker:And really basic shapes for body parts.
Speaker:I really like to make sure that nothing requires any kind of artistic flair.
Speaker:When it comes to doodling for improving clinical reasoning, the
Speaker:big thing is to just get started.
Speaker:If you have a patient case where things are feeling a little fuzzy, I'd encourage
Speaker:you to grab a sheet of paper and start to doodle the body area you're dealing with.
Speaker:I'd also encourage you to check out my blog post, where I give
Speaker:some examples of clinical doodles.
Speaker:I've done.
Speaker:Well, thank you for hanging out with me today to hear about how to
Speaker:improve your clinical performance.
Speaker:Make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify to stay up
Speaker:to date on future episodes.
Speaker:And if you've enjoyed this episode, I truly appreciate you leaving
Speaker:a five star review on iTunes.
Speaker:Here's to less frustration, more flow and better clinical results till next time.
