When A Good Referral Can Be The BEST Treatment

One of the biggest learning experiences clinicians will (hopefully) have in their career is developing the understanding that we DON'T know it all and we CAN'T be it all for our clients.

The true mark of a skilled clinician often goes beyond the immediate treatments that we provide. It's also characterised by the understanding of when and how to lean on the expertise of others.

There are a number of elements that feed into clinicians being resistant to referring-on or introducing another clinician/provider or subject matter expert into the equation, a genuine want or feeling of responsibility to help the person, internal pressures, external pressures, and at times, ego.

Oftentimes what will serve us better than spending countless hours delving into a topic that isn't entirely within our scope, within our regular sphere of clinical practice, or even our area of interest, is devoting that time to understanding who may be better suited to help our client in this regard and building a referral relationship with them.

Never underestimate the power of a good referral.

This isn't to say that if it's a topic you're genuinely interested in you shouldn't deep-dive, I'm all for building knowledge and continual learning.

What I am saying is that if it's a topic/subject that you a) aren't overly interested in, b) don't have the time or motivation to learn, c) isn't within your current or planned clinical niche, and d) have people within your network who are interested, motivated and have the knowledge &/or resources, investing your time into building a referral relationship may be a much wiser use of your time & energy.

A Broader Perspective

Many of us are across the benefits of multi-disciplinary care, but even in those who do work in multi-disciplinary environments there may still be a need for a perspective shift.

For some, their view of a multi-disciplinary approach may still have an element of territoriality, an almost "ownership" of the pathology or the anatomical location.

A beneficial perspective shift comes when we recognise and value the diverese tapestry of expertise available in the wider health and fitness communities we work in.

When we defer to another professionals' expertise within our management plan, or redirect a client entirely out of our care towards someone we genuinely believe is more suited to helping them, we're practicing holistic, patient-centered care.

Recognising our Limits - An Asset, NOT a Flaw

There are two things that will often happen as we accumulate years of experience within our respective professions.

1) Our knowledge & experience will continue to grow, often into our own niche areas of interest - this is why we see so many subject matter experts, this is exactly what we want & what our patients need.

2) The wisdom that despite our years of experience it doesn't afford us absolute authority on every subject we may see in clinical practice.

Recognising when & where another professional (health, technical or otherwise) might offer superior insights or solutions isn't a sign of being an inferior or sub-standard clinician, it's a strength.

Often in our early years of practice we feel an immense amount of pressure when a patient seeks our advice on a particular problem, concern or topic.

"They're asking me about this topic, so I should know about this topic,
but I don't know a lot about this topic...
Does this mean everyone else does and I don't?
What else does everyone know more about than I do?
Am I a terrible clinician because I don't know!?!?"

Tip 1 - You can't know it all and you don't need to know it all.

Tip 2 - Recognising this is almost liberating, you will alleviate a lot of undue pressure & stress on yourself.

Once we've recognised that we have others to lean on and refer to, we give ourselves an invitation to level-up as a practitioner.

By tapping into a broader reservoir of expertise we can actually offer our clients MORE, even if in one sense we feel like we're doing LESS.

Benefits of a Robust Referral Network

There are a number of ways in which we can see the benefits of building and tapping in to our referral networks.

Firstly (and most importantly), client outcomes & satisfaction.

When a person feels they've been directed towards the best possible solution or expert, this undoubtedly delivers a high degree of satisfaction. Even if you physically weren't the person delviering the solution, you were the person who pointed them in that direction, this is rarely forgotten by your client and it will often still work in your favour when it comes to word-of-mouth referrals.

Secondly, we also learn more about a subject by building these referral networks.

When we work closely with other experts and communicate with them (often via referral correspondence, follow-up calls or meeting in person), this provides us with a trove of learning opportunities.

The knowledge we gain from these collaborations can improve our diagnostic or assessment skills, improve our ability to develop more individualised management plans, and make our referrals more effective.

Effectively Leveraging Your Referral Network

The more we understand about our referrers and get on the same page regarding the expectations surrounding the referral - ie: the services/treatments they are able to provide, the amount of communication & information that's required before when making referral, the information provided after the referral etc. the more we can fine-tune this and it can essentially become almost a treatment unto itself.

Gathering the most appropriate information to provide to your referrer is a skill unto itself. Build it, use it.

This is possibly the most important element we need to understand and a skill we need to build.

The quality of the service can often be underpinned by the quality of the information that's provided. If we're giving substandard information, then we have no right to be irritated if our expectations aren't me.

A perfect and exceptionally common example - clinicians referring for diagnostic imaging and they may be suspicious of a pathology in a specific area, yet their referral may just be "Forefoot ultrasound, L forefoot pain." The sonographer will run through the motions of a standard forefoot series and if it doesn't image what you're after... that's on you.

On the flip-side and where things are relevant pertaining to the quality of the information, is when making a footwear referral.

Patient has ___________ pathology and needs this specific shoe.

Yet, due to the ever-evoling nature of footwear, the current model of ___________ shoe may not actually have the characteristics that are suited to the person.

A quality referral in this instance may be;

"Patient has ___________ pathology and requires a shoe that has ___________, ___________ and ___________ characteristic, because we are wanting to achieve ___________ & ___________ . They are planning on using the shoe for ___________ activity 3 x per week."

The footwear retailer is going to (hopefully) have intimiate knowledge of their product and understand the elements you are requring and why you are requesting these.

The primary take-away from this is that recognising where you can most efficiently and effectively use your time to get the best outcomes for your clients is sometimes not in developing an intimiate understanding of the topic itself, but developing a relationship with a professional who does have this intimate understanding.

That's not to say at all that we shouldn't have a base level of understanding, there is certainly a minimum threshold of knowledge required, but being smart about where we are putting our time, effort and energy serves not only us, but the clients who are seeking our care.

As always, I hope this has shared some useful insights and if you have any thoughts on this I would love to chat - leave a comment or send a DM.

Lastly, whilst we're on the topic of building knowledge, building knowledge and learning how to develop stellar referrals that will best serve our clients I have a shameless plug.

If you're looking to improve your referral collaborations with footwear stores, to improve your patient outcomes, I encourage you to check out Athletic Footwear for Health Professionals - a high-quality, low-cost monthly subscription designed to be a clinicians 'go to' resource for all things footwear & lower limb msk.

This isn't just for clinicians who treat high-level runners. It's designed to suit the broad clinical demographics that we all work in - essentially, for any clinician who makes running/walking shoe footwear referrals for any client.

The aim of AFHP is to bring together contemporary evidence & best practice, with current retail & technical and invite experts to help guide us through the applications within clinical practice.

Monthly Webinars - Monthly Literature Breakdowns - Quarterly Virtual In-Services - Monthly Footwear Release Updates - Clinical Resources & more...

Our Foundation Memberships have just launched and the Founders' Rate is available at an incredibly low price of LESS THAN AU$3/week (available until 31st August 2021) - click here to find out more.