Remember – you don’t need a referral to come in for assessment

What to expect from your first assessment:

We’ll normally ask you to come in a few minutes prior to your appointment so that you can fill in the appropriate paper work for our patient data base. We can also help you with the ACC forms.

You will then have a full ½ hour session when we’ll ask you a series of questions about your problem, how it affects your normal daily activities and what your goals are for recovery. It may be that you just want to walk around the Bays or maybe you want to be training for the Coast to Coast. – everybody’s different and that’s why we like to spend the time with you at the beginning to find out what your expectations and goals are.

After we’ve taken a thorough history, we’ll want to have a good look at how you move – whether you can move appropriately and fully and whether of course you have any discomfort. We’ll look at the specific area you’ve described to us but we’ll also look a little beyond that because some problems can be more complex than they initially seem to be. We believe it’s really important to make sure we get the ‘full story’ so we don’t waste any of your time and we get you better as fast as possible. Depending on how complex your problem is we may want to continue assessing other areas in future sessions or start treatment straight away.

Usually you will get some treatment on the first session; you’ll certainly always get some advice about how you can manage the problem better. We’ll always encourage you to do as much as you possibly can to get you better as fast as possible and we can give you a big or small home programme, whatever you’re prepared to work with.

What to expect from treatment:

Every time you come back to see us for your problem, we’ll reassess how you’re going and make sure that you’re on track towards your goals and targets. There are a variety of treatments that physiotherapists use and each of our clients will have a personalised programme and schedule of recovery. Your treatment may include:

• Mobilisation and manipulation. These are manual techniques applied to joints and soft tissues of the body. They help restore movement and reduce discomfort and pain.

• Soft tissue massage . This can help reduce any scaring and swelling in the soft tissues, reducing discomfort (increased pressure in the area can really hurt!) and making sure the soft tissues heal optimally.

• Movement patterning advice . This is a huge area of physiotherapy. What you do in the other 23 hours of the day that we’re not seeing you will have a huge impact on your problems. We’ll make sure you’re not doing activities that are going to irritate and further aggravate your problem – whether it’s advising you on the best way of getting in and out of a chair, a car or altering your walking pattern.

• Muscle imbalances . This relates to faulty movement patterning. It’s really important that you use of all your muscles appropriately, we spend time assessing that, then give you a home programme that addresses any problems with weakness or tightness in the muscles.

• Acupuncture . Acupuncture can be a fantastic adjunct to physiotherapy both in pain reduction and also to promote the overall healing process

• Ultrasound .Ultrasound may be used to speed up the inflammatory process to promote healing. It’s particularly useful in the acute stage of an injury.

• Bio feedback . We have several devices which can help show you and motivate you to perform an appropriate task / exercise.

Always in your treatment our physios will provide you with a dynamic and motivating session. We want to make sure that you’re doing all the right things to best help your recovery and we’re there to motivate, encourage and educate you on the best way of doing that.