Playbook, physiotherapy clinic
The Saturday night message a physio widget must not try to answer
Physiotherapy has no out of hours arm. There is no on call service to point at, which means the temptation to be helpful is stronger here than in any other clinical trade, and the helpful answer is the dangerous one.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for out of hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- There is no emergency physiotherapy service, so unlike trades with an on call rota there is nothing after hours to hand somebody to except their own doctor or an urgent care route.
- The messages that land after closing are overwhelmingly flare ups: more pain since a session, or swelling that started after an exercise programme, and both of those are clinical from the first word.
- The obvious out of hours reassurances in this trade, rest it, ice it, do the exercises gently, are treatment, and offering one at eleven at night is a machine prescribing to somebody with nobody to check it.
- A large share of weekend messages ask whether to attend Monday's appointment, which looks like a diary question and is actually a clinical judgement about whether somebody should be treated.
How it arrives
- i am in a lot of pain since my session
- is anyone there tonight
- should i still come on monday
- my knee has swollen since the exercises
- what can i do until you open
- can someone ring me first thing
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your closing times and the next working day | Including weekends and holiday closures, so the assistant can say when somebody will actually be read rather than implying a reply overnight. |
|---|---|
| The urgent route you want people sent to | The wording you are happy to publish for somebody who cannot wait, pointing at their doctor or an urgent care service. Write it once, and let the assistant repeat it exactly. |
| How enquiries reach you and how fast you respond | Where a handover email lands and the response time you will stand behind. An out of hours promise you cannot meet is worse than an honest wait. |
| Any published post treatment information | If you publish general guidance about what to expect after a session, index it by name and keep it general. The assistant must never select from it in response to a described symptom. |
The reply
The clinic is closed now and messages are picked up the next working day [1]. I cannot give advice about pain or tell you whether to come to an appointment, and I do not want to guess at it out of hours. If you are worried tonight, or the pain is severe or getting worse, please contact your doctor or an urgent care service rather than waiting for us [2]. Leave me your name and an email and the clinic will ring you when they open.
It says the clinic is shut first, because everything else depends on that. It refuses the clinical question and the Monday question together, since they are the same question, and it does so without pretending either is unreasonable to ask. The urgent route is given before the handover, so somebody who genuinely should not wait gets that sentence before they get an offer of a call back.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any out of hours message describing pain, swelling, a new symptom, or asking whether to attend the next appointment.
I cannot help with that from here and nobody is in the clinic now. If you are worried tonight please speak to your doctor or an urgent care service. Leave me your name and an email and the clinic will ring you when they open.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never suggest rest, ice, heat, or any exercise in response to pain reported out of hours.
- Never say that a flare up after treatment is normal or expected.
- Never say whether somebody should attend or skip their next appointment.
- Never imply that anybody will read the message before the clinic opens.
Questions
- Can we not give something reassuring at least?
- No, and this is the one place to be strict about it. Reassurance about a symptom is a clinical statement, and out of hours there is nobody to correct it before somebody acts on it.
- Should the fallback message change after hours?
- The clinical refusal should not change at all. What can change is what comes after it, which is when somebody will be read and where to go if they cannot wait.
- Why send people to a doctor rather than to us on Monday?
- Because some of these messages are not physiotherapy problems, and the assistant is not what should be deciding which. One route that works for the serious ones costs nothing for the rest.
Keep reading
- Everything for a physiotherapy clinicSession prices, referral rules and what to wear are safe to automate. Exercise advice and injury assessment are not.
- Handling out of hours in generalThe difference between an emergency route and a message form, and why an honest wait time beats a promise you cannot keep.
- Insurance questions before a first physiotherapy appointmentRegistration, authorisation codes and session limits. The insurance answer that decides whether a physio books.
- Quoting a physiotherapy session price without predicting a recoverySomebody asking what a physio session costs is really asking what getting better costs. Answering both honestly.
- Answering the practical questions before a first physio sessionClothing, scan reports, chaperones and whether treatment happens on day one. The practical half of a physio first visit.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.