If you are a fellow healthcare practitioner, let me tell you a story.
A few years ago, I was dealing with chronic stomach issues. Doctor after doctor, my pain was dismissed. My symptoms were chalked up to stress and psychological issues. But honestly? I knew something in my body was wrong — It wasn’t “all in my head”, so to speak. It wasn’t until I found a practitioner who truly heard me, and ran the right tests, that I finally got a proper diagnosis.
This experience changed everything for me as a PT. It showed me how important it is, as a healthcare provider, to listen to my patients. It pushed me to provide better care – to see the person behind the symptoms.
As an aside, this is also why I made the decision not to take insurance in my practice. Insurance companies prioritize profits over people. Their cost-cutting measures dictate how you will be treated, and I don’t agree with limiting a person’s access to the kind of care they so desperately need. I’d much rather have an open and honest relationship with my clients than end up undertreating them just to get things covered.
The thing is, if we really want to help our patients, we have to provide long-term solutions. We have to learn how to listen and validate their pain — to treat our patients as a whole and start digging into the issues in their sleep, breathing, posture, and habits.
Treating TMJD is not just about the joint or where it is or how it’s doing. It’s about addressing what got our patients through our doors in the first place.
Please, please, look beyond symptoms and band-aid solutions. Recommending a soft food diet and anti-inflammatories aren’t all we can do to help with a patient’s jaw pain. By teaching mobilizations and exercises, we give them the tools they can use to help themselves.
Providing better care also means seeking more education about TMJD. The minimal training we received in school is simply not enough. The more we learn, the better we can serve those who come to us for help. By providing more resources, we empower our patients to make informed decisions about their treatment options.
Above all, we must be willing to rewrite the narrative. To change the status quo and push back against the system that stops us from giving people the care they need. Our patients deserve lasting relief, and it’s up to us to make sure they get it.
At the end of the day, our patients know their bodies best, and it is in each other’s mutual interest if we listen and learn from them.
Misinformation and stigma are an epidemic faced by people living with TMJD (and other disorders), and we need to set aside our biases and be open to different avenues, options, and opportunities to understand and provide better advocacy and care for the people we have sworn an oath to provide care for.
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