Having a physiotherapy appointment is so much more than turning up and having a massage! If you book an appointment for an issue, I want to get to the bottom of it to try to work out why it’s happened, how to settle your symptoms, and how to prevent it from happening again or coming back!
To start your physiotherapy appointment off, we have a chat
Taking time to listen to your history is so important. I like to know all about your symptoms. Not just where it hurts, but also how long for, aggravating & easing factors, what sort of pain it is, and how much it’s affecting your day-to-day activities. Pain can be due to injury, age, stress, repetitive activities, overload, inactivity, a change in your activities, or (most commonly) a combination of a few of these factors, so it’s also really important for me to delve into a little bit more about your life too.
Next, I take a good look
I’ll then take a look at you. This will involve you moving the area of your body affecting you, as well as me looking at you replicating movements you’ve told me you complete in your day-to-day life. What I decide to look at is very much dependent on what you’ve told me in our initial discussion. I’ll usually look at a combination of some of the following: your posture, range of movement, strength, endurance, flexibility, quality of movement, and nerve tightness / flexibility. I also like to have a feel around the area you’re getting pain to see how tight and sensitive it feels to touch.
We complete your physiotherapy appointment by coming up with a treatment programme
As I’ve got a good idea of how busy your life is, and what activities are important to you, it means we can formulate a treatment plan together, that will fit into your life and give you the results you’re after. There are often treatment options I can complete with you in your appointment, such as manual therapy. As your appointment is just a short period of time when you think about your week as a whole, it’s important to think about what you can be doing outside of your appointment to optimise your recovery. This means I usually talk through activity modification, and give you advice on how to return to aggravating & painful activities safely. I’ll also often give you a rehab programme, involving you fitting in a few exercises consistently around your busy life.
Then you’re good to go! With many injuries you will need more than one session as you recover to reassess your symptoms, continue with any hands on treatment, and progress your home exercise programme & advice around return to activities.
If you have any further questions about what happens in my physio appointments, email me and ask away! My email address is [email protected]. You can also find out more about my physio appointments by clicking here.
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