Hi there!

I am 3 years out of school as a physical therapist and boy, have I grown! My apologies for the first few patients I treated....compared to what I know now I probably didn't help much lol.

Despite how confident I've become with my skills as a therapist, and after having helped so many people....I still find myself getting extremely anxious over small situations that happen. Whether it be increasing a patient's pain every so often, a patient telling me I "did something to them," or a modality gone wrong. Just last week, I had a guy lying down on a hot pack around 12 minutes. Used appropriate amount of covering and kept asking the guy if he felt comfortable, which he did. After taking him off the heat and turning him over, I was SHOCKED by how red his back got. He didn't complain of discomfort or anything, but I was definitely worried that I burned him. Redness only slightly went down during the next 20 minutes. Still dreading a phone call from my per diem job telling me that the patient called to complain.

Do any other PTs, or other health care workers for that matter, experience this amount of anxiety? They say this gets better with more experience, but right now I can't imagine it going away.