Getting It Right

Physiotherapy is a profession where the outcome can vary greatly between practioners. This can depend on so many different factors such as the clinicians education and staying up to date with the current evidence based practice, treatment plans and clinical skills, powers of observation, getting information from the clients and piecing it together...the list is endless.

Recently I have had a couple of patients come to me that have seen other Physio's in the past and not received the results they were after. The first two were referred to me by someone else I know, as she knew my approach to treatment was not to tell the patient what the can't do - a lot of Physio's tell their patients to stop exercising or doing their sport to allow the body to recover. I instead work out what the problem is and see if there is a way the client can continue participating in their chosen sport or exercise routine by modifying their technique or their participation, allowing them to continue to be involved but also resting their injury.

These two clients had previously been managed with the 'total rest' approach, which was not sitting with them, and no matter how long they were resting for, their injuries were not getting better. One of these clients was getting knee pain on walking stairs and hills and running. After two sessions with me, through modifying her squatting technique and postural loading, along with a fairly strict home exercise program she was pain free on stairs and 6 weeks later she has recommenced running pain free.

The other client that was referred to me - when seeing his previous physio, a diagnoses could not be made and therefore there was no treatment plan in place. Frustration was building. Through really specific muscle testing, and going through the process of elimination, I was able to come up with what I thought was causing his groin pain, which I ended up deciding there were two sites on injury instead of one. Again with really specific exercise prescription, and eliminating exercises that put excess length through the abdominal insertion/adductor origin region (eg Burpees - which he was really devastated about :P ) this client was managing his pain down at a 1-2/10 and had returned soccer which he had been experiencing pain with for over 3 months, within 2 weeks. Another YES moment.

The final one that came to see me yesterday lives rurally and has had hip pain for over 3 years. Every time he came to Perth he tried Physio and saw no improvements within 2-3 session, at 3 different Practices. He told me that no one was able to tell him what was wrong. After assessment, I was able to tell him it was not his hip causing the pain, it was a nerve in his back that had been irritated and was sending referred pain to his hip. This was also what was causing the tingling in his toes which he didn't think was at all involved. By the end of one session, he was able to touch his toes, his tingling was gone and there was no hip pain. He took 4 of my business cards to give to his friends.

I'm not saying I always get it right, because I am constantly learning and sometime you learn by making mistakes. But when I do get it right and I can help people that have almost lost hope in Physiotherapist...good feeling!