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• Choice Physical Therapy News • Patient Success Story
ARE YOU ADDRESSING ALL 4 PHASES?
(continued from outside) After discussing where you’re having trouble, how it came on, what makes it better/worse we begin gathering information. How is your body compensating? How does that line up with the symptoms you’re experiencing? Once we have all the data we can get down to business... designing your individual program based on the particulars of your evaluation. At Choice PT we use a simple illustration to give some insight into our decision making process. We call it the 4 Phases of Recovery: PHASE 1: Goal: calm down pain and inflammation This is usually the tissue that has been irritated due to other areas of the body not working efficiently and this injured tissue has taken the brunt of the stress for too long, resulting in pain. PHASE 2: Goal: restore range of motion, muscle flexibility, isolated muscle strength At this point pain should be subsiding in terms of intensity (not as painful), frequency (not coming on as often), and duration (not lasting as long when it does come on). Here we address all of your body’s individual compensations that were resulting in extra stress being placed on the area that was injured. PHASE 3) Goal: Return to normal function and ability This is the exciting phase (I mean, let’s be serious, this is Physical Therapy we’re talking about, isn’t it all exciting?!). Phase 3 is where
we’re designing your exercises to specifically get you back to the things you need, want, and love to do in your life!
PHASE 4: Goal: maintain the results you’ve achieved and strategies to prevent future injury It’s graduation time! You’ve put in the majority of the hard work. We want to make sure you’re set up with the strategies you’ll need to maintain the results you’ve achieved. I like to give the analogy of the gas light in your car. When the light comes on, you don’t need a new car. Heck, you don’t even need to call your mechanic. Just put some gas in your tank and life will be good. There’s no “gas light” for our bodies and historically, as healthcare professionals we’ve been very reactive...waiting for your car to run out of gas on the side of the road (aka pain to set in and stop you from doing the daily things you need, want, and love to do...for those of you not following my crazy analogy) before we try to help you feel better. I would argue that Phase 4 is the most important part of a Physical Therapy program. Unfortunately, after being a PT for 11 years in three different states I consistently see that this is the phase that gets the least attention. We need to continue to push for a more proactive healthcare system as opposed to kicking the can down the road and scrambling to react after tissue injury has occurred.
Happy September everyone! Joe
www.choiceptny.com
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