Physical Therapist

What's a typical day like for a physical therapist?

Asked by Andre Hammon about 12 years ago

Sorry for the late response, I totally forgot to answer this! Typically a day is filled like this: see patients every 30min, document their progress, more paperwork, on the phone with insurance provider. The bulk of the day is patient care and documentation. The phone calls and other paperwork is interspersed throughout the day. A patient usually stays for about 1 hour. At the clinic I worked at, I would see the patient for 30 min, and then hand them off to an aide for the rest of the time while I worked with the next patient. If it was the patient's first visit (evaluation day), then I'm with them for the entire hour. So you are really on your feet and staying active pretty much all day long. I'm rarely sitting as I tend to document while with the patient. But I will still try to steal a few minutes to finish up documenting their visit once they leave. In the end, it can be pretty tiring and I can understand how some people get burnt out doing this day in and day out.

Why do physical therapists hate chiropractors?

Asked by brikhaus almost 12 years ago

Ha, I get this question asked a lot. Not everyone hates chiropractors, I think it's just a different school of thought. Let's take low back pain as an example. Physical Therapists are trained to analyze movement and assess someone's biomechanics during functional movements. PT treatment for low back pain is focused on evidence-based exercises to increase strength and flexibility, incorporating manual therapy to improve joint and soft tissue mobility, and to educate the patient on ways to maintain benefits achieved from therapy and prevent future pain from occurring. The idea is so that the patient can avoid recurrence, or know what to do if that pain should come back again. I think that many therapists feel that a chiropractor's solution to the same problem would be to just use modalities ( i.e. ultrasound, e-stim), and joint manipulations (crack the back). This causes a patient to have to continuously repeat their visit to the chiropractors office for weekly, monthly or yearly adjustments. PT's also incorporate modalities and joint manips in with their treatment, but it is in conjunction with those I described above. We aim to have the patient become eventually independent with their care and not have to make those repeat visits. This is just what I have observed from past patients or from what some of my other colleagues have said. Many chiropractor's offices also include physical therapy care in with their practice. I'm sure they have similar goals for their patients as we do as well. But I also think PT's hate always having to correct society on the fact that we are not glorified massage therapists. Chiropractors marketed themselves very well at the start of their profession and seem to be the go-to place for back issues, or any other joint problems. Both physical therapists and chiropractors have similar training, requiring post-graduate work, and taking a licensure examination. So it may seem a bit like the middle child syndrome where PT's always have to validate their profession. Dr. Oz recently had a segment on cutting-edge solutions to back pain. It was great to get exposure for PT, but many were upset that the cutting-edge solutions were ultrasound, tiger balm, and using bumpy balls. Those are definitely not cutting-edge solutions. Those are solutions I can teach you to use in under 10 minutes, and doesn't require a doctorate degree to learn or understand. So, I believe that hate is probably better described as the constant and frustrating work physical therapists have to educate the public on what we actually do, and the benefits of our profession.

What's your opinion on massage as a form of physical rehabilitation? They obviously feel great, but do they actually help with rehab?

Asked by BondFire310 almost 12 years ago

This topic is definitely a sore one for many therapists as the public thinks this is pretty much all we do. We are not massage therapists and our clinics aren't relaxing spas. They are never the main part of our treatment approach. That being said, there are therapeutic benefits with massage. It can help with muscle spasms, allow the therapists to increase range of motion, etc. Someone asked a similar question to this earlier in the thread, so I'm going to attach what I wrote there as well: Yes, I do believe that 'massage' has its medical benefits. I put quotes around massage, because I, and probably many of my colleagues, consider massage something very relaxing/soothing that you would get at a spa. What we really do is soft tissue mobilization (STM), that deals with the manipulation of soft tissue, or the areas encapsulating a joints that have restricted range of motion. After an injury, our muscles, ligaments and fascia tighten up, therefore STM is very useful in manually stretching those areas and restoring range of motion. This type of manual therapy can also promote restoration of joint function, improve blood flow, lymph drainage and increase nerve signals to the injured area. More often than not, I'd say manual therapy is not quite pleasurable as we are trying to improve function, not have a day at the spa. There was a running joke at my clinic that PT actually stood for 'Pain' and 'Torture'....affectionately :).

Dear Dr. Ever since I had perianal abscesses due to c-diff. I've had pelvic floor cramps. They're not overly painful now. They was. Now they bothersome. Do massage therapist massage perineum? Or is it to awkward?

Asked by Bill over 4 years ago

Achilles tendonitis right heel. Eccentric heel drops and rolling out calves. Almost a year since pain. Will I always feel pain or will it go away? Not sure why it is taking so long to heal. Am I missing a crutial component?

Asked by Adam about 11 years ago

Hi,

I'm an avid golfer who has recently discovered that I have scoliosis. I was wondering if golf will make my condition worse, and whether of not I have to terminate my golfing career. Thanks.

Asked by bchu almost 8 years ago

I have been having upper right back pain around under my shoulder blade since December now. It was unnoticeable at first, but then became worse and worse since then. It is a really sharp pain when I move my shoulder back or move a certain way. I have tried following those upper back stretches, and since then the feeling has gotten way more painful than before. It also hurts in the spot when I take a deep breath. I also had a heavy backpack for school and don’t have the best posture, and I am pretty sure that this wasn’t caused by an injury, although a bit under a month before December I lifted up a heavy bookshelf with my dad (that had all the books on it) and I sort of felt like a pop in my back, it did hurt but I still lifted it up the second time, that could have affected my back maybe... .I don’t know if this is related, but during this pain for a week it felt like something in my neck was popping (it was sudden and very painful), and for the past week my lower back has been aching. My neck was aching again today also.
I also went to physical theory about 3 weeks ago, and now my upper back pain is even sharper and more sensitive. It feels almost like a rock in my back and when I move a certain way or take a deep breath something pushes against it. It is not swollen, and doesn’t hurt when I touch the spot unless I press really hard. Also when I bend sideways to the left, and push it pretty hard, i feel a weird sensation, almost like a small slip. For some of the physical therapy I actually can’t do some of the moves, like one where I push my shoulder blades together, and then downwards. At the therapy appointment, and for the week after I could do it, my back still hurt a bit when I did it, but it was only a little pain, but now and for the last 2 weeks it is too painful to do to the point that even that if I want to, I actually
can’t do that movement, like my body can only take so much pain. I just really want to know what might be going on, the pain is just getting slowly worse and worse. The physical therapist and doctor were thinking that this is just a muscle strain, but I really have a feeling that it might be more than that, since when I looked up and researched on muscle strain In the back, it didn’t really match up with what I’m feeling. Also lately I’ve been feeling a lot of pins and needles down my back and tingling in my arms and legs, but none of this is constant. I also always feel short of breath, and in pain. Please let me know as soon As possible what might be wrong with my upper back so that I might be able to get it fixed. Also do you think this is serious enough that I should take further action?
- sorry that his might seem like a lot of information, but I’m 14 yrs old and my parents don’t really think this is a big deal, but being in so much pain every day is just not a good way to live, and it would really help if you had some kind of idea as to what this might be. I don’t know who else to ask about this for free... so this really is like my only hope to know what’s wrong with me.
Pls help!!!

Asked by Chicken764 over 2 years ago