Working to Improve Care

Practice Manager for Surgical and Dental Services Laura L. Doyle said UHS is aware of complaints about long waits for physical therapy appointments and has been working to improve the situation.

According to Doyle, while the waits for appointments were as long as three weeks in January, since then UHS has hired additional physical therapists and increased its hours.

Therapists do have room in their schedules to accommodate patients with serious cases who need to be seen immediately, she said.

Doyle admitted that there is still room for improvement. "I still think [the wait time] is probably not good," she said.

Patients who feel they are not getting the care they need can always turn to UHS Patient Advocate Kathleen Dias.

Dias said while she does occasionally get complaints about service from students, usually those complaints are not from RSI patients.

A Broader Problem

According to Coley, patient complaints about physicians' limited RSI knowledge reflect a gap in the field of medicine in general, not just at UHS.

In discussing the treatment of RSI at UHS, Coley emphasized the fact that little research has been done on RSI.

"There are a lot of orthopedists and rheumatologists who believe this doesn't exist," he said.

While some similar phenomenons like carpal tunnel syndrome are well-documented, Coley said "almost all students coming in with upper extremity symptoms do not have carpal tunnel syndrome."

"We see an awful lot of people who have some vague symptoms," which are not necessarily associated with a pinched nerve as in carpal tunnel syndrome, Coley said.

Because RSI is so under-researched, Coley said it is unclear which treatments are actually effective.

In an effort to further the understanding of RSI, Harvard has sponsored an interfaculty study of the syndrome.