Do Online Physio Sessions Really Work?

Some of you may be sitting there thinking that online physiotherapy must be impossible! For a profession that is known for being ‘hands-on’ how can we treat without physical touch or being there in the room with you?

This blog is hopefully going to help you understand how we get real online results without any hands-on treatment or formal hands-on assessment.

We’ll Understanding Your Story

This is step 1 to any physiotherapy assessment. For us as physiotherapists, to truly understand what strategy your body has adopted and why, we need to understand your history.

This will work the exact same way as if you were in the clinic. We’ll ask a series of questions that will help us understand which muscles your body is trying to protect and which muscles your body is compensating with.

It may not seem relevant to you but we’ll be very interested in the timeline of events running up to the injury. For example, have there been any previous injuries to other structures before, or had there been any emotional stressors running up to the injury?

Again this is all very valuable information for us and will help us get a step closer to the root of the problem. Once we understand this, we’ll already have an idea in our head of where we need to assess to either reject or confirm our hypothesis of what is really going on in your body.

Getting Clear On Your Movement & Symptoms

After we’ve asked you all the questions we need we’ll then get you to perform a few specific movements and tests. This is called the objective assessment.

Here we’ll ask you if it brings on any pain or discomfort as well as analyse how well you move into a certain direction. Although you may think that we need to move you around and physically move you, the vast majority of the assessment you can do yourself.

We’ll need you to be clear and descriptive about what you’re feeling during certain points of the movement/testing so we can fully understand what the problem is and what structures may be influencing your problem.

We’ll Explain The Problem & The Solution

Once we have finished your objective assessment we’ll then sit down and discuss the issue you are struggling with. Here we will explain to you what we think is the root cause of the problem and how we can successfully and efficiently get you back to your dream outcome.

Just like in in-person appointments we’ll need you to be clear on what goals you want to achieve as this will heavily alter our treatment process to make it specific to you as an individual.

We’ll Get To Treatment

Once you have a good understanding of what the problem is we’ll begin the treatment process. This will be very similar to in-person appointments in terms of trying and practising lots of different exercises apart form of course there won’t be any hands on treatment from ourselves.

We may, in certain cases, teach you a couple of self hands-on techniques if we think it is appropriate for your issue but the vast majority of the time we will make significant progress through exercises alone.

Throughout this we will continue to check on your key performance indicators – these are parts of the assessments that we are wanting to have a positive influence on with the aim of improving these tests.

Week by week/session by session we will then increase the level of difficulty with the exercises whilst continuing to re-check these KPI’s to ensure we get you back to your dream outcome as efficiently as possible!

How We Know It Works

Nothing feels better than seeing our patients living the life they want. And we have had some really successful treatment stories from patients we assess online.

Here are just a few who have managed to change their life around without us having to lay a finger on them…

Do You Have More Questions That Need Answering?

I hope you can now see the real benefits of online physio sessions. Although at first it may seem impossible to get the quality of care you need online, in reality, every good therapist should be able to provide the best care even over the phone or video call.

If you have any more questions, or you’re ready to book an online or in person assessment, we’d love to hear from you. All you have to do is click here or call 01484 443173 to book your appointment slot today.