Hi kayelle,

Excellent replies above. If i could add some things?

1. anxiety is usually due to uncertainty. If you don't plan on doing outpatients/MSK in the future, DO NOT do what i am about to say Go and find a physio who is reputable to be their physio assistant. This will let you watch good physios and be around common problems and so ain confidence.

2. I have lots of patients with anxiety. We use NLP with them - Neuro Linguistic Programming. Works a treat. Find a good NLP therapist and invest in yourself!

3. With all patients, your clinical reasoning should ask 6 questions (IMHO)
a. What are the main myofascial probable casues of this patient's problem
b.What are the main articular (joint) probable casues of this patient's problem
c. What are the main neural (including motor control) probable casues of this patient's problem
d. What are the main visceral probable casues of this patient's problem - not even your supervisor is likely to give good answers here!! hahaha - things like scarring of internal organs from operations, tumors, dysfunction, ANS dysfunction etc...
e. What, if any, psychosocial issues that are relevant - what is the patient's story, what give's their pain meaning, what beliefs do they have etc etc etc
f. What are their current coping strategies - they can be mal-adaptive and be perpetuating the problem.

If you keep that line of thinking up now until you retire, you will always be learning - lifetime learning is the only viable option for good physios.

I won't say "don't stress" because you can't think about what NOT to do without think about IT (stress) first !!!

Rather, i want to encourage you by saying "Be cool, calm, confident and relaxed!!!"...

...Just a little snippet of what NLP look at Good luck!!