On the day of your first visit, you will meet the office staff and physical therapist responsible for helping you develop a plan to manage your condition. Be prepared to fill out some paperwork that will help the physical therapist develop your plan. You will also participate in an examination to better understand what is bothering you. The following is a brief description of what to expect.
This part of your first visit will be a good deal of talking; your therapist is likely to ask you a number of questions regarding your current condition. This discussion will open up for any questions that you may have as well as we go along. It’s a conversation and not an interview!
After that, we will want to see your body’s ability to move so we will go through a number of movements and positions to see how your body reacts. Along with that, we will take a full screen of your orthopaedic system, neuromuscular system, integumentary system, and cardiovascular system. Putting all this information together will help us evaluate your condition which will allow us to give you options.
The examination will include:
At this point, we will begin another conversation regarding your condition; we will inform you, if we haven’t told you along the way, about the findings from our examination. From those findings, we are going to present you with the best option for your current condition, and any alternatives that may be useful if we agree that the primary recommendation won’t be the best at this time. All of this information will give us the ability to give you a prognosis for your condition.
During the Evaluation, you can expect:
Reducing your symptoms and returning to your favorite activities will depend on the completion of treatment. All of our hard work together in the first two steps (Examination and Evaluation) will lead us to what kind of things we need to do to get things feeling better. Typically, treatment includes moving in certain directions to help restore motion and blood flow, manual techniques from your therapist to increase those effects, lots of education to understand the problem, and some homework to make sure everything is carried over throughout the day and you can control your symptoms at any time, independently.
Your treatment will likely include: