If you think physical therapy is only about rehabilitation after surgery or recovering from an accident, think again. For the vast majority, seeing a physical therapist should be about prevention, routine assessment and staying well. “We're the best-kept secret in health care,” Sharon Dunn, the past president of the American Physical Therapy Association, told The Associated Press.
Roger Herr, the current president of the APTA, and Gammon Earhart, associate dean for physical therapy at the medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, echoed Dunn's prevention message in separate interviews with the AP. “We need to change our image by getting out of our silos, out of our brick-and-mortar clinics,” said Dunn, who teaches at LSU.
The image of the profession tends to be one-dimensional. You’ve had knee surgery , your back keeps acting up or you’re injured and you've been referred by a physician to a physical therapist. You go several times, you get an evaluation and you’re discharged with exercises to do and advice about how to move more efficiently.
“That's a big chunk of what physical therapists do,” Earhart said. “But I think a lot of people don’t understand. They think when they have a major medical problem that a physical therapist is going to massage them until they feel better.
That’s not what it is.” Follow the dental model Many in the profession favour thinking of physical therapists the way we do dentists; patients make appointments for .
