The Benefits of Physical Therapist

Physical therapy is beneficial to anyone healing from an injury. The term physical therapy is quite simply “the treatment of disease, injury, or disability by physical and mechanical means” which include remedies such as exercises, massages and heat treatment. (Merriam Webster) The most interesting part about physical therapy is the rehabilitation process and the road to recovery and treatments that aid the recovery.

Physical Therapy

Physical therapists, also known as PTs, are “highly-educated, licensed health care professionals who can help patients reduce pain and improve or restore mobility” (Apta, 2015). Physical therapists help treat people with different injuries, diseases, deformities, and are key to the recovery process. A prime example would be a physical therapist being assigned to an athlete because of an injury.

Requirements

Being a physical therapist is not easy because being one requires a master's or doctoral degree. Since so much time is dedicated into becoming a physical therapist their patients are always in top notch care. The importance of having a highly trained individual such as a physical therapist aiding your recovery is key, because of the education that they receive to do such a task. While being required to help reduce pain and improve mobility skills they are also required to learn the human body.

Different Types of Injuries

Learning the human body is important because it helps by being able to treat different diagnosed injuries. The main types of bone injuries include knee injuries, dislocations, and fractures. Common knee injuries are most knee sprains, meniscus tears, ACL, and MCL tears. A great example of a knee injuries is when a person climbs a ladder but then they fall off and they fall on their leg.  According to the Mayo clinic more than 200,000 cases per year deal with dislocations which are normally short term injuries. Fractures, also called broken bones, have “more than 3 million cases per year”.

Learning about Each Injury

The importance of learning the top types of injuries to the human body helps, because the physical therapist already knows how to treat the injury in the best way possible. Learning the human body and how it works allows includes having the ability to stick with each patient no matter the time needed for recovery.

Healing from Injury

Recovery for each injury varies between factors such as the patient, type of injury, and whether the patient is “training through the rehabilitation process” as stated by Dionne, C. If someone expects to automatically heal and regain strength 100% after getting injured without proper exercise the person will heal but at a slower rate. No one wants to be hurt but allowing a highly trained PT to help lead exercises will pay off in the long run.

Recovery Time

Knee injuries range from 2-6 weeks or 8 weeks to 10 months. Fractures take 6-8 weeks to heal and dislocations take 4-12 weeks. Knowing the length of each injury is important for a PT, because it allows them to set up a training regimen for the patient’s recovery process

Physical therapy and the treatments that are required for recovery will always be beneficial for the patient. Regaining strength and mobility skills should make the patient feel proud of themselves. The main goal of a physical therapist is trying to help that individual with the recovery process and to regain strength.