What do you do when a patient does not follow your treatment plan and is not improving?
As a rehabilitation counselor, there will be times when patients do not follow your treatment plan and will not improve. The patient may feel frustrated that they are not improving as quickly as they would like and may give up, they may be complacent and not want to improve, they may have cognitive disabilities and not understand what they need to do, or they may have injuries that make it too painful to do the work that is needed. Describe what measures you take when a patient does not follow your treatment plan.
"When I have a patient who is not following their treatment plan, I first try to determine why. I set a meeting to talk with the patient and gently ask why they refused to follow the plan. How I follow up depends on their answer. I recently had a patient who was not following her treatment plan, and when I asked her why, she said it was because she wasn't interested in improving because her family never took her out anymore. Her goal was to improve so she could go out with her family more often and enjoy life, but when they stopped visiting, she gave up hope. After hearing that, I met with the family and explained their mother's goals and how she felt when her family didn't visit. They had become so busy with a new house and baby, and they did not realize how that impacted their mother's progress. They agreed to schedule at least one day a week to take their mother out, and my patient agreed to start following the treatment plan."
