Building Your Osteoarthritis Care Team
Building your healthcare team
Professor David Hunter, rheumatologist
The person with osteoarthritis should engage a team of health professionals to help with both the diagnosis and management of the disease in the first instance ideally a person should be adequately diagnosed with osteoarthritis by their general practitioner or by a physiotherapist to try to better identify that they truly do have osteoarthritis. Following that try and identify why you develop this disease and specifically what you can do about those risk factors as to making that disease course more tolerable for you and better understanding the management and long-term control of it and specifically there I’m talking about losing weight if you're overweight or obese and engaging with a dietician to help you to do so, and/or alternatively engaging with a physiotherapist or an exercise therapist to help with strengthening the muscles around the joint in addition to helping with aerobic or cardiovascular fitness. In addition to that it's helpful to focus on the medication management that may help to control the pain that a person may suffer from in the context of osteoarthritis and in that context either a general practitioner or a specialist such as rheumatologist may be helpful in the management of that of that disease. If you are desiring a brace and orthotic then orthotist might be helpful if you have specific functional needs or deficits such as devices or tools that you may need in activities of daily living an occupational therapist may also be helpful and if you have specific psychological needs a psychologist, psychiatrist or a social worker may be advantageous in helping you to manage the disease. There are lots of health professionals who are out there to help in the management of the disease that it's critical that every person who has osteoarthritis be very involved in the management of the disease themselves and engage with educated professionals around them to help to facilitate that self-management and other strategies. It's important to build a good healthcare team for the management of osteoarthritis because you can't do it alone most people it's really important for you to understand that self-management is critically important but it's also really important for you to understand that no man is an island and that for you there are specific people out there that can help to focus down on particular problems that you might have whether that be lack of mobility a lack of exercise overweight and obesity, for which there are different health professionals that can help best to facilitate changing those modifiable risk factors. In that context don’t think of yourself as a person that can go it alone it's really important you engage a good health care professional team around you and make sure that they understand what it is that your goals are, make sure that they understand what it is that you want to attain long-term and help them to facilitate you reaching your goals.
What is considered ‘quality care’ from your healthcare team?
Quality care from any health professional for the management of osteoarthritis should include them considering you as an individual paying particular attention to the risk factors why you may have developed this disease in the first instance so taking an appropriate history and examination to facilitate that. Making sure that you focus on getting an appropriate diagnosis in the first instance and then with regards management making sure that conservative non-medical nonpharmacologic options are considered first with regards to management of this disease not skipping straight to prescription of an analgesic not skipping straight to a referral to an orthopaedic surgeon unless that's otherwise appropriate. In the first instance focusing on simple measures to help to modify the course of the disease which oftentimes are ignored to the person's detriment. So, another really important aspect of good quality care is getting sufficient information both about the disease but also about what is expected of the health professional long-term. So, ideally information about the disease run through disease education programs which you can also get good disease education from my joint pain but obviously also other programs that are offered by arthritis organizations throughout Australia in addition to that you should also walk away with a good understanding about how regular you're going to be engaging with this health professional how much that's going to cost you and what sort of benefit you can accept expect to attain from that regular interaction.
How to start building your healthcare team
There are a lot of different ways that you can engage with health professionals in your community. First and foremost, I would recommend using my joint pain as a great way to do that within your local community to find a health professional that's suitable for the particular management options that are ideal for you. In addition to that if you have a particular need you might want to go to the Australian physiotherapy Association website to find a physiotherapist with a specific expertise that may not necessarily be on my joint pain website you can do the same on the Australian Rheumatology Association website for finding rheumatologist. Irrespective my joint pain is a great place to start with funny health professional suitable for your specific needs it's critical that everybody with osteoarthritis know that it's not one health professional that's going to best manage all of the aspects of this disease so helping the GP or the doctor that they're sitting in front of to better understand who that team of health professionals is that will best enable them to manage their own disease and engage in a management plan to facilitate that.
