What is Physical Therapy

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Physical therapy is a branch of rehabilitative healthcare that includes the evaluation, assessment, and treatment of individuals with limitations in functional mobility.

Physical therapists are trained to assess your condition and help you regain maximal functional mobility and independence. They use a variety of treatment modalities and techniques to help you move better and feel better.  Treatment is highly individualized, cutting edge, and research-based to return patients to their optimum functional level.

Often part of a rehabilitation team, physical therapists provide hands-on therapy, exercises and stretching maneuvers to patients with chronic conditions or serious injuries to ease pain and facilitate health and wellness.

Through focused home exercise plans and individual attention, these professionals help patients restore their range of motion, build strength, improve flexibility and manage pain as they recuperate.

Who benefits from Physical Therapy?

If you have an injury or illness that results in pain, physical impairment, limited movement, or a loss of function, a Physical Therapist can help.  Some patients are referred to physical therapy from his or her physician, but others seek therapy directly.

The benefits of physical therapy include:

  • Prevent the onset and or slow the progression of conditions resulting from injury, disease, and other causes
  • Pain management with reduced need for opioids
  • Avoiding surgery
  • Improved mobility and movement
  • Recovery from injury or trauma
  • Recovery from stroke or paralysis
  • Fall prevention
  • Improved balance
  • Management of age-related medical problems

Physical therapists treat people across the entire lifespan. Many therapists have certifications or specializations to treat a certain population, like children, the elderly, or athletes. Regardless of age, if you have impaired mobility, a physical therapy evaluation may be warranted to offer treatment and a strategy to improve function.

Operate Out of Love

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Carroll Nelligan, President, Chief Operating Officer

 

My heart is hurting today as I know is the case with all of you.  This is not a political post.  There are plenty of avenues for that.  We have been faced with many months of challenges and we are all fatigued in different ways.

I am writing about what I know to be true.

Operate out of love.

You are healers.  It is your destiny to bring that into the world.   What I kept thinking about over the weekend is that we are all aligned in that.  We are wired to care, to nurture, to help, to love.  We don’t see our patients through a lens of what color their skin is, their political views, or their income.

When I worked in urban Philadelphia, we treated the worst of the traumatic brain injury cases.  The Philly cop that was shot during a terrible robbery, the Hasidic Jew who was in the school bus bombing, the young boy from the Manayunk projects who had been shot on a corner drug deal, none of it mattered who they were but how we could help them become human beings again.  The love for our patients and the ability to change lives is what drove us.

In so many ways we have all been pushed to a limit.  We have been stripped down to our basic selves and have nowhere to hide, to safely tuck away, to self-care.  You have an opportunity through your work to bring your best selves into the world each day.  To spread love and compassion and to raise the energy of the world we live in.  We have choices to operate out of fear or operate out of love.

I am so proud of the way that we have responded during the pandemic.  We are strong, we are resilient.  Those are not just words on a wall.  We have seen this in action. So many stories of those who redefined what it means to be essential.  It brought tears of appreciation to my eyes.   These are very challenging times.  When one wave hits us, another seems to be waiting in the ocean to pummel us again.  We can breathe.  We can survive. And, we can thrive.

When hearts are hurting like this, focus on the lovely human you are treating in front of you.  Your full and undivided presence and attention to your patients, to your teammates, and to your community is what is needed right now.  We need you on the ground following a moral compass that points in the right direction regardless of what the world is doing wrong.  We need leaders who continue to search for the best answer, not the familiar one.

We are transforming as a nation, as a world, as a human race.  Thank you for all you do as healers in a world that needs so much healing right now.