The worldwide shift in our lives from COVID 19 has quickly made “Telehealth” a household word. You may wonder, how can a physical therapist treat a patient without using their hands? In fact, there are many ways your PT can effectively assess and treat your physical ailments via Telehealth. For physical therapy, we call it “Teletherapy”.
As more people are being asked to live their lives from home, aches and pains can increase due to poor ergonomic workspaces, inability to access our gyms or weekly workout classes, and sudden increases in time spent on home projects or in the garden. Disruption of healthy routines and habits and increased stress and anxiety about how to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe can have a significant impact our pain levels. Further, pain science tells us that the pain response is heightened when the body or mind is experiencing stress. If you are experiencing increased pain, consider the relationship to increased stress, particularly during these sudden life changes.
Through Teletherapy, physical therapists can help you assess and modify your workspace, develop a new movement routine, prescribe and progress exercises to address your pain, and provide guidance that keeps you moving toward your goals. Your physical therapist’s primary goal is to optimize your quality of life by helping you manage your condition. During this time of uncertainty, high stress, and constant change, optimizing your quality of life is of vital importance.
Our clinic is uniquely positioned to provide Teletherapy services due to our Postural Restoration (PRI) approach. Postural Restoration can be done quite effectively without the therapist needing to use their hands. PRI empowers the patient to learn to treat themselves using guided positioning and breathing to restore balanced posture and alignment. Postural Restoration also recognizes the influence of the nervous system on our movement and breathing patterns. Specifically, PRI techniques address the imbalance between the “fight or flight” stress response and the “rest and digest” relaxation response to improve our body’s ability to heal itself and manage pain. All of the therapists at Advance Physical Therapy have training in Postural Restoration and are committed to providing compassionate, quality care at the same level of excellence they provide in the clinic.
Meeting with your physical therapist through a Teletherapy platform is surprisingly not that different to meeting with them in person. The therapist will guide you through a posture and movement assessment and watch as you perform your exercises. Teletherapy also allows your therapist to evaluate your home program in your actual home environment! For those needing manual or hands-on treatment, your therapist may also teach you or someone in your household how to perform pain relieving techniques.
As we all move through these uncertain times, we are grateful to be able to stay connected and provide continued care for our wonderful patients through Teletherapy. We hope that if you are in need, you will reach out to us through Teletherapy for your continued health and well-being.
If you have questions about setting up a Teletherapy appointment, billing or insurance, please email our office manager, Deana McCollum at: office@advance-physicaltherapy.com or call our office at 919-932-7266.
