What Should I Expect From Physical Therapy - Part 2

Following a thorough 1st visit, typically referred to as your "evaluation", the patient should not expect all evaluative procedures to cease. You should notice your physical therapist asking frequent questions about your status upon arrival, after most new exercises, and just prior to leaving the clinic.
Everyone involved in your treatment should be aware of what increases and decreases your symptoms on an exercise-by-exercise basis. For the most part, those exercises which decrease your symptoms should be continued. Those which worsen your symptoms should either be discontinued, or modified so as not to aggravate your condition.

As you demonstrate the ability to perform more and more exercises, properly, without the need for the supervision, those should be added to your home exercise program. By "home exercises program" we mean anything you can do outside of the clinic; whether it be at home, at the gym, or even your office.

The results will rarely come as rapidly as desired - we all want to be healed yesterday. But when measured on a week by week basis, you should notice a significant reduction in pain intensity and/or frequency. You should notice that your physical therapist moves you from general strengthening to more functional movements like squatting, stairs, and lifting, within your level of tolerance.

The final, and possibly most important thing every patient needs to do, and be encouraged to do by a physical therapist, is to communicate. Patients need to report recent issues, changes in the condition, and how home exercises did or did not help. When your therapist asks, "How are you doing today," it usually is not appropriate to respond as you would normally: "fine"; "OK"; or "good". Those responses are probably not accurate. If they were, you would not need to be spending your precious health care dollars. You need to go into detail about what you've been up to since your last visit, and how it affected your condition. Being an active participant in your plan of care can make the difference between Outstanding Results and living in pain.