By Steve Howell
Someone once said, “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care,” and it’s always stuck with me.
It’s applicable to so much of what we do as physical therapists, but perhaps most for manual physical therapy.
Putting your hands on a patient gently and confidently shows someone how much you care. Doing it the right way – in a way that will help them get better and gain trust in you – shows someone how much you know.
Manual therapy is a specialized area of physical therapy. It’s literally putting hands on a patient with multiple goals in mind. It could be soft tissue work to relax muscles and tendons to increase blood flow. It can be to help increase the mobility of a joint, to soften scar tissue to make it more pliable to improve mobility or as a resistance approach to strengthen joints.
Because of the broad application of manual therapy, a lot of people will say they do manual therapy, but not everyone is a manual therapist. The reality is, physical therapists invest in hundreds of continuing education hours to receive credentials in this area.
For example, there are Certified Integrated Manual Therapists (CIMTs) and Orthopedic Clinical Specialists, both of which are manual therapy certifications. As a company, we’re really proud of that because we’ve invested in our clinicians to get that additional training.
As clinicians, we think it’s vitally important because manual therapy is such a key part of the treatment of every patient.
There may not be a scientific term to explain the power of the human touch, but we believe in it so much that every patient we encounter has a hands-on component to every treatment session – stretching, mobilizing a joint, massaging for swelling.
Physicians who recommend physical therapy for their patients should ask their patients during follow up visits if their therapist is putting their hands on them every time. Are they seeing the same physical therapist at every appointment? Are they progressing exercises and receiving treatments that they could not ordinarily do at home?
These things are important to helping patients get back to moving, back to their active lives.
And so is the relationship the patients report having with a physical therapist.
It’s not human nature to move a joint and stretch it beyond what hurts. Human nature is to protect that joint, stop it from moving, rest it and hope it will get better.
Physical therapy counteracts this instinct by demonstrating that you can progress to move safely and efficiently, even beyond what may be comfortable at first.
As physical therapists, we have to get our patients to believe in us, to trust that we will not hurt them. Manual therapy with its power of the human touch and specific treatment techniques is a strong way to develop that trust.
And when you have trust, patients are more likely to comply with the exercises we ask them to complete at home.
Why? Because no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
Steve Howell, PT, MEd, ATC, is a Vice President and Peninsula Regional Director for Tidewater Physical Therapy, an independent, physical therapist-owned outpatient practice headquartered in Newport News, Virginia. Tidewater Physical Therapy features more than 30 clinics and three Performance Centers from Virginia Beach to Richmond. Learn more about Tidewater Physical Therapy at www.tpti.com.
