What Is Physiotherapy?
Physiotherapy is an allied health profession that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of conditions that cause joint pain, muscle pain, movement disorders, sports injuries, fitness, work injuries and musculoskeletal dysfunctions. Our Physiotherapists can help treat and prevent many of the sports injuries, musculoskeletal injuries, mechanical movement dysfunctions, women’s and men’s pelvic health issues, post-surgical weakness and rehabilitation as well as many other painful medically related physical discomforts that you may encounter throughout life.
What Does A Physiotherapist Do?
Our physiotherapists play a crucial role in helping you get back to health and into everything you love doing in life. Whether it be managing an acute sporting injury or managing the rehabilitation phase of a back injury, our physiotherapists utilize a combination of hands-on manual therapy and exercise prescription to help you make sure you not only get out of pain, but stay that way. Our physiotherapists are trained to help in many areas that include but are not limited to:
- Acute sporting injuries
- Ankle issues
- Arthritis and joint replacements
- Back pain, disc bulges and sciatica
- Headaches
- Hip & gluteal stability
- Knee pain
- Muscular injuries
- Neck & upper back stability
- Pre and post natal conditions
- Rotator cuff injuries
- Shoulder pain & instability
- Spinal & core strengthening
- Tennis elbow
- TMJ Dysfunction
- Various women’s health issues
- and many more!
What to Expect From A Physiotherapy Session
For your initial physiotherapy assessment you can expect an appointment length of approximately 60-70 minutes. After that, a normal Physiotherapy follow up session is usually 45 -60 minutes. Having these longer appointment times allows for thorough professional physical assessment, diagnosis of your specific problem and treatment all in the one session.
Most patients receive a structured series of exercises and stretches to do at home to complement their treatment in our clinic. Our Physiotherapists help you understand what causes the problems and related injuries as part of our educational approach to integrating the treatment with your lifestyle. All our treatments are one-on-one in private treatment rooms. Our clinic’s do not require that you have a doctor’s referral to see our Physiotherapists, you can fill out one of our self referral forms instead. All of our Physiotherapists are registered with the Canadian Physiotherapy Association as well as members of the Newfoundland College of Physiotherapists and WorkPlace NL approved.
Our Physiotherapy sessions include the following:
- A thorough assessment to reach a diagnosis
- An explanation of your problem
- An understanding of the cause of the problem
- Hands on treatment
- Methods to speed up recovery
- Strategies to prevent recurrence
Our Physiotherapists like to educate you on why you are hurting and not feeling your best before they use the latest hands-on techniques such as joint mobilization, manipulation (if needed), stretching, taping, soft tissue techniques and acupuncture to assist in pain management and injury recovery. We also focus heavily on providing personalized exercise programs involving biomechanical analysis, specific muscle activation, strengthening and conditioning exercises. Other areas included in the exercise program include balance and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, postural correction, and core stability training to assist in the restoration of the physical function, injury rehabilitation and performance of the body. Our physiotherapists help in the prevention of all kinds of injuries, particularly sports injuries. Our physiotherapists will discuss any important lifestyle factors such as training programs, sporting goals, workstation setups and postural correction to help prevent problems from recurring or better still, from happening in the first place. In many cases there is more than one cause of your pain, especially if it is a chronic or recurring problem.
Is Physiotherapy For Me?
A common misconception is that physiotherapy is just for people who are injured or in pain. However, physiotherapy can cover many other areas as well as musculoskeletal injuries. Many people come to see our Physiotherapists for an assessment, advice and instruction on improvement of their posture, muscle imbalances, strengthening and overall quality of life.
Other conditions we treat are; stroke and various neurological conditions like Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s Disease to mention a few, as well as emphysema, COPD and any other chest congestion.
We have a diverse team of therapists many of which have worked with provincial, national and Olympic level athletes covering a wide variety of sports. Our team brings high performance sports knowledge, training and experience into the clinical setting and your treatment. As part of our routine care, we teach you self-treatment. Our aim is to give you the ‘tools’ necessary to prevent the problem from returning so you can reduce your dependency on ‘hands on’ treatment, reducing the interruption in your daily life due to health problems.
For targeted, excellent and preventative Physiotherapy in St John’s, call TSL Physio today to book an appointment with us.