What To Expect During Your First PT Visit

Is it your first time going in for physical therapy? Asking yourself what you might experience during this first visit? Don’t worry, physical therapy isn’t all that bad. Just ensure that you dress comfortably because you will need to do some moving.

By the end of your first visit with an experienced physical therapist in Palmetto Bay, you will possess a clear-cut idea about your assessment, as well as your goals for physical therapy treatment. You and your physical therapist can cultivate a unique treatment plan to help you with your recovery.

What is Physical Therapy?

You might wield a general idea about physical therapy, including what it is, and what physical therapists do. However, do you know why you need to visit a physical therapist, or what differentiates these specialists from ordinary healthcare providers?

A physical therapist is an expert on the neuromusculoskeletal system as well as the nervous system. Physical therapists must earn a doctorate degree in physical therapy, in addition to accomplishing clinical internships to obtain their status as a licensed physical therapist.

Nonetheless, similar to many medical care professions, physical therapists treat numerous acute injuries in addition to chronic conditions while rehabilitating patients. Aside from injury treatments, physical therapists additionally provide conditioning for injury prevention and general wellness services.

An experienced physical therapist in Palmetto Bay is essentially a mechanic for the human body. They treat the mechanisms that provide your body’s movement. These professionals simply aim to get your body back into shape.

Time for Evaluation?

The first visit to an experienced physical therapist in Palmetto Bay is almost always an evaluation. During this session, you and your physical therapist will work harmoniously, reviewing your medical history relating to your musculoskeletal circumstances while performing objective testing.

This testing helps diagnose the root causes relating to your injury and determines the course of physical therapy treatment.

It is important that you prepare yourself for a standard set of questions. Where do you hurt? What helps alleviate this pain? What worsens the pain? These questions will help your physical therapist get an idea about your overall health.

The next step in the evaluation is a screening of all of your major bodily systems. This measures precisely how interrelated your systems might be. The screening will likely involve taking your blood pressure, determining your weight, and also your height.

A physical therapy treatment is both uniquely cultivated, as well as applied. An experienced physical therapist in Palmetto Bay will consider your range of motion, joint mobility, strength, posture, and movement patterns.

When they analyze your gait, they can diagnose any compensation in movement, possibly uncovering further clues to the root issues behind your problem. This helps them create a clear solution to how this impacts your specific condition. Using these measurements as a baseline, your physical therapist can compare improvements that you will make in future sessions.

Starting Off on the Right Foot from Day One

Make sure that you prepare for treatment during this first session. Although physical therapy is not a painful process, you will still do a lot of moving and stretching. An experienced physical therapist in Palmetto Bay will also likely mobilize your joints using their hands with manual therapy techniques. However, this application does depend on your specific injury.

Day one with a physical therapist represents the beginning of your journey into wellness and beyond. Some injuries may pose more difficulty concerning the healing and rehabilitation process than others. It is important that you remember that all healing takes time to accomplish.

You may also wonder why a physical therapist analyzes your hips or the way you walk when your problem is in your shoulder. It is not uncommon that your evaluation includes other parts of your body that may not seem related to your injury.

This is due to injury causes often appearing in areas far away from actually experienced pain. Your evaluation is comprehensive and includes any factor that may contribute to your circumstances in addition to the concentrated, comprehensive analysis of your specific injury.

Won’t an Injury Eventually Heal on Its Own?

This is a question our patients ask us a lot, and it is a valid one. Although some injuries do heal on their own, this is not true for all. Physical therapy can also help improve the recovery duration, as well as your overall quality of life during rehabilitation.

Google is a viable resource for information, but when it comes to medical care, it only travels so far providing self-treatment for injuries. This is the case with most medical conditions in and out of the neurological and musculoskeletal fields.

It is always important that you remember that your experienced physical therapist in Palmetto Bay is an expert on your musculoskeletal system. Their program is customized specifically for your needs, and design to help you feel better while functioning optimally.

It is always vital that you ask questions, and address any concerns while going through physical therapy. By the end of your first session, your therapist likely will provide you with a specific treatment plan already mapped out for your future. Nonetheless, open communication about your overall condition during treatment is essential to your success.

Your involvement in your treatment is crucial to healing optimally. Your physical therapist is simply there to guide you as effectively as possible for the best outcome.

For more information on an experienced physical therapist in Palmetto Bay from Progressive Therapy Centers, contact our caring and courteous team today!