Appointment Information

Upon arrival to Mr Robin’s rooms, please notify our reception staff and take a seat. For your convenience, you may wish to complete your registration prior to your appointment by downloading and printing this form.

What to Bring With You?

When you attend for your appointment, please remember to bring the following things:

• Letter of Referral from your GP/Specialist
  
• Your Medicare Card
  
• Your Health Insurance/DVA/WorkSafe/TAC details
  
• ALL of your relevant X-rays, CT’s, MRI’s, Bone Scans and reports of any ultrasound scans. (A CD WITH THE ACTUAL IMAGES, OR PREFERABLY THE PRINTED FILMS – THE RADIOLOGISTS PAPER REPORT IS NOT SUFFICIENT)
  
• Blood test results and any relevant correspondence from previous consultations
  
• Any patient ID cards that may have been issued to you from you radiology service (such as MIA)
  
• Any relevant operation reports or hospital discharge summaries, if you have them
  
• Any progress reports from your physiotherapist
  
• A list of your usual medications and any allergies you may have
  
• Any relevant medico-legal documents

Hip or Knee Assessment

All medical assessments begin with talking to the patient and Mr Robin will ask you about what the current problem is. Mr Robin will discuss problems relating to pain by asking questions about where the pain is, how severe it is, what does the pain feel like, what things make the pain better or worse, what treatments you’ve had and how you’ve responded to them. If there are any other associated features such as clunking, a sense of instability or stiffness these will also be discussed.

Mr Robin will also make an assessment of what sorts of restrictions your symptoms result in with regards to everyday life, such as disturbance of sleep, limping, reduced walking distance or speed, difficulty with managing stairs or getting in and out of cars, and managing getting shoes/socks/pantyhose on. He will also inquire as to how your problem impacts on your work/social/recreational life.

Each consultation will require a careful examination of the relevant joint and occasionally the spine, knee or hip. This is to confirm the presenting problem; assess its extent and to check for consequences to other regions.

After this, a clinical diagnosis is suggested, and there may be some alternative diagnoses that may require further investigations to tease out which is correct. If you have brought any investigations with you such as X-rays, scans, blood tests etc, Mr Robin will review these to see if they confirm or disagree with the clinical diagnosis or with any of the alternative diagnoses. If the relevant investigations haven’t been performed then Mr Robin will arrange for you to have these done and then be reviewed with the results at a future appointment.

If any treatment is recommended, Mr Robin will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various non-operative options in the first instance, if they are appropriate (and they often are!) and they haven’t already been explored prior to your consultation. This may include things such as:

• Altering, adding or increasing some medications such as anti-inflammatories and analgesics
  
• Lifestyle and Work modifications which may improve your quality of life and/or prevent further damage/or symptoms
  
• Physio and Hydrotherapy
  
• the use of walking aids
  
• and possibly diagnostic or therapeutic injections

If most of these non-surgical options have been optimised or have been tried and failed, if you are considering having surgery, then Mr Robin will discuss the advantages, disadvantages and any potential risks from the various surgical options that may be appropriate for your condition. Mr Robin is more than happy to answer your questions regarding these problems and encourages you to ask relevant questions. Please also see the sections on this website relevant to your condition as other patients/doctors are likely to have asked the same questions in the past.

Other Assessment

(not seeing Mr. Robin regarding a hip or a knee problem)

While other areas of the human body have problems that may be more specific to them and different from the hip and knee, the principles of taking a history regarding the complaint and associated problems, examining the relevant region(s) of the body and then assessing the relevant investigations still hold true.