The Outsiders - Clinicians divorced from their profession with Dr Gita Ramdharry

01/26/22 • 41 min

The Words Matter Podcast with Oliver Thomson

Welcome to another episode of The Words Matter Podcast. As usual, thank you to all the support via Patreon – every pledge is hugely appreciated.

So I did say that the previous episode with Rob Jonah would be the last outsider episode for a while, in order to make way for the clinical reasoning series.

However, there’s time for one more and I’m delighted to squeeze this one in before Dr Roger Kerry kicks off the Clinical Reasoning Series where we talk about sciencey thinking in the context of evidence informed clinical reasoning.

So make sure you hit the subscribe button on your podcast player so you don’t miss out on what will be a brilliant collection of conversations.

On this outsider episode, I’m speaking with Dr Gita Ramdharry. Gita is a Consultant Allied Health Professional in Neuromuscular Diseases at the Queen Square Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases UCLH in London. She is an Honorary Associate Professor at UCL and a Visiting Professor at Kingston University.

She has worked as a physiotherapist since 1995 and developed a special interest in neurology early on. Gita completed a PhD in 2008 looking at walking patterns, endurance and orthotic interventions for people with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. See more about Gita’s research here.

Last year, Gita wrote a wonderful blog post on her experiences of the interaction and sometimes clash between the physiotherapy professional culture and her own mixed heritage and cultural background. The blog is titled 'Awakening to the impact of culture on how we deliver care and treat our colleagues'.

In her blog Gita talks about the challenges she perceived as student, educator and clinician in feeling like a cultural outsider in relation to physiotherapy. I’ve linked the blog in the show notes and would encourage you to have a read as it’s the perfect accompaniment to our conversation.

This is the first time that I’ve directly focused on culture and ethnicity on the Podcast and Gita provided the ideal opening to these important issues and I’ve taken so much away from listening to her experience and I am sure you will too.

Find Gita on Twitter @gitaramdharry

Support the show and contribute via Patreon here

If you liked the podcast, you'll love The Words Matter online course and mentoring to develop your clinical expertise - ideal for all MSK therapists.

Follow Words Matter on:

Instagram @Wordsmatter_education @TheWordsMatterPodcast

Twitter @WordsClinical

Facebook Words Matter - Improving Clinical Communication

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Welcome to another episode of The Words Matter Podcast. As usual, thank you to all the support via Patreon – every pledge is hugely appreciated.

So I did say that the previous episode with Rob Jonah would be the last outsider episode for a while, in order to make way for the clinical reasoning series.

So make sure you hit the subscribe button on your podcast player so you don’t miss out on what will be a brilliant collection of conversations.

Find Gita on Twitter @gitaramdharry

Support the show and contribute via Patreon here

If you liked the podcast, you'll love The Words Matter online course and mentoring to develop your clinical expertise - ideal for all MSK therapists.

Follow Words Matter on:

Instagram @Wordsmatter_education @TheWordsMatterPodcast

Twitter @WordsClinical

Facebook Words Matter - Improving Clinical Communication

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Previous Episode

The Outsiders - Clinicians divorced from their profession with Rob Jonah

Welcome to another episode of The Words Matter Podcast.

As always, a huge thank you to those of you supporting the podcast via Patreon – you help enable these conversations to become possible. f you’d like to contribute you can visit Patreon.com/thewordsmatterpodcast – every little helps.

So, on this episode I’m continuing with the Outsider Series where I speak with clinicians who feel they’re outsiders of their profession; sharing their experiences, struggles and how things could maybe change.

And this may be the last outsider episode for a while, as I’m pausing the series to commence the much-anticipated clinical reasoning series, with some fantastic guests, so stay tuned, but there are plenty more outsiders planned to share their experiences.

Today I’m speaking with former osteopath Rob Jonah. Rob qualified as an osteopath in the UK a couple of years ago, having changing from his previous career as a plumber. He talks about his experience as a student and initial period in professional practice; a combination of which lead him to leave the osteopathy profession and return to his plumbing career.

Rob’s experience of being an osteopath is just that, his experience. And as you will hear it’s a largely negative one. However, I believe that by hearing his experience of how he entered the osteopathy profession and then abruptly left those of us in clinical education and leadership may learn how we can better develop new osteopaths who are on the edge of professional life and support new clinicians post-qualification.

I know Rob personally, and he’s not some disgruntled and bitter new grad that couldn’t hack it as an osteopath. It was clear to me that he wanted to make it work, he gave it his all and that leaving the profession was a difficult and undesired last resort. I hope and I think you will come to the same view after listening.

If you want to have more context into Rob’s decision to leave the osteopathic profession, you can check out the place where he announced his decision on his Instagram profile @How2Move.

Needless to say, it sounds like Rob’s in a much better place now and I wish him the best in his return to his previous career (see here).

Support the show and contribute via Patreon here

If you liked the podcast, you'll love The Words Matter online course and mentoring to develop your clinical expertise - ideal for all MSK therapists.

Follow Words Matter on:

Instagram @Wordsmatter_education @TheWordsMatterPodcast

Twitter @WordsClinical

Facebook Words Matter - Improving Clinical Communication

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Next Episode

The Clinical Reasoning Series - Do clinicians think like scientists? With Dr Roger Kerry

Welcome to another episode of The Words Matter Podcast.

Thanks to all of you that support the podcast via Patreon, it means so much and really helps the podcast grow. If you’d like to support the podcast for as little as a pound or a couple of dollars per episode (here).

I’m taking a break from the Outsider episodes to explore the area of clinical reasoning, and to kick off the series I’m speaking with Dr Roger Kerry, whom I chatted with on the podcast last year in episode 35 where we discussed causation in relation to evidence based practice (EBP) as part of the CauseHealth Series.

Roger is an Associate Professor in the Division of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Nottingham. He specialises on risks and adverse events of manual therapy, neck pain and headache as well as clinical reasoning (see his research here). He holds a PhD in Philosophy with the doctoral dissertation Causation and Evidence-Based Medicine (see here).

So on this episode we talk about:

How EBP offers a backdrop to our clinical reasoning. The framework is now omnipresent across healthcare and Roger talks about how it should or could shape clinicians’ thinking, reasoning and interaction with patients.
Some of the main developments, issues and questions resolved and those un-resolved around EBP.
What it means to clinically reasoning within a EBP.
How EBP makes us sensitive to the different sorts (and weighting) of knowledge and evidence and we discuss the implication of this with our clinical reasoning and the potential conflicts.
Whether clinicians think like scientists and whether clinical reasoning is sciency?
The similarities and differences between the scientific method and diagnostic reasoning such as data collection, hypotheses formulation, testing and inductive and deductive reasoning.

It’s always an absolute pleasure speaking with Roger; his laid-back style defies the intense consideration he has given to the deep philosophical problems of EBP which while as clinicians we may never fully appreciate (nor necessarily are required to) they help keep us on our toes and be aware and alive to how complex clinical practice is which should motivate us to ensure that our thinking and reasoning remains sharp and purposeful.

Find Roger on Twitter @RogerKerry1

Support the show and contribute via Patreon here

If you liked the podcast, you'll love The Words Matter online course and mentoring to develop your clinical expertise - ideal for all MSK therapists.

Follow Words Matter on:

Instagram @Wordsmatter_education @TheWordsMatterPodcast

Twitter @WordsClinical

Facebook Words Matter - Improving Clinical Communication

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★