What the?

Hi all
Been ages since I blogged but i doubt any of you were that interested in "what I did today on my SDP", so I have had to wait to get my first clinical exposure in 9 weeks. Rusty is an understatement. So here I am in Tom Price. The weather's nice and warm so all is good. My issue is one that stems from the difficulties of being a primary care provider. Most of the stuff I'm doing is outpatients musculo, which is cool cos I'm interested in the area. My previous experience in this area was a positive (even successful) one, but I don't feel prepared for what I'm seeing now. Alot of acute backs (as in patients screaming in pain type acute backs) and other conditions that I'm finding difficult to work out. One particlular patient has pain radiating down the back of his leg and some lumbar flexion restriction, but otherwise his back was pretty clear to other examination. Huh? Going through all the pivms and paivms and all of that didn't produce anything. I had tried to be as thorough as I could but still no idea. My supervisor gave me a hand and it was decided that the problem was neural tension (the slump test I forgot to do...). Anyway the supervisor took over a bit which I'm ok with and went through a bunch of Mulligans neural mobilisation techniques that I've never seen before. They seemed to work ok and I'll be giving them a crack next time. Anyway, treatng people who have just walked off the street (without referral etc as with alot of the things I've seen) is proving a real challenge. Go Cats
M