Jane Dixon's first Blog!

‘Write a Blog’, my boss said.  ‘What’, I said.  ‘Yes – about your last trip to the Netherlands’, he said.  ‘At my age’, I said.  ‘No excuses’, he said!

So here I am, at the tender age of – well we won’t go into that now – writing my first ever blog, about one of my regular trips to Europe.  But a bit of background info first.

Here at Progress, I am the Clinical Specialist Women’s and Men’s Health physiotherapist working at Advanced Practitioner level treating such things as urinary and faecal incontinence, prolapse, erectile dysfunction, constipation etc. etc.  All those problems that people generally don’t want to talk about.  I’ve been specialising in this area of physiotherapy for 30 years now, and teach both undergraduate and post-graduate students.

In 2002, I added a new dimension to the ‘tools of my trade’ and purchased a real-time scanner to enable me to get more in-depth information about the problems I was treating.  In fact I was probably one of the first women’s health physios in the UK to use a scanner.  I have a physiotherapy friend who is also a sonographer, so he put me through my paces and trained me up.  Without going into too much detail, the scanner enables me to watch pelvic floor and core abdominal muscles working, and analyse where things are going wrong.  And so to the reason for my trip.

As you’ve probably guessed, one of the things I teach is pelvic floor scanning.  I started teaching in Belgium in 2008, and in The Netherlands in 2011. The course runs over 2 days and is highly interactive. I wouldn't have it any other way, and it does keep me on my toes.

So my recent trip to The Netherlands was a busman’s holiday.  This time I flew to Amsterdam and took the train to Almelo.  Normally husband, dog and I drive and stay with our daughter who lives in Antwerp.  The dog knows all the ‘necessary’ stopping places en route!  But not this time as it didn't fit with other plans.

The course ran according to plan, with 16 delegates all keen to understand how ultrasound scanning improves assessment and treatment of pelvic floor dysfunction problems.  The physiotherapists are very focused and keep me on my toes with the hundreds of questions they ask.  Discussion is always rife, and I find this very rewarding too.  Not only am I teaching, I always leave these courses having learnt something from my colleagues too.

My trip home was equally exciting.  I had to stay overnight at Schipol Airport, as there were no late flights back to the UK on the Saturday.  So I stayed at the new modular CitizenM hotel. 

Rather than describe the layout, I’ve attached a couple of pictures.  Now it’s not every day that you make your daughter jealous but, well ……. 

I’m off again to The Netherlands in May to teach for two days and, yes, I’m going to stay overnight at the airport!!!