Back Pain Support Group

Hi Folks,

The advice is being written by someone who has experienced and overcome back pain. I am not a doctor and my advice is not intended to replace a doctors advice. Your doctor should always be your first point of call for questions to do with your health. This post is just intended to share how things have worked for me, in the hope it may help others. Other people will have different experiences and advice to offer - please add to this post to help others.

This post is just my opinion on finding a GOOD physical therapist (or in Australia we call them physiotherapists) referred to as PT through the rest of this post.

Having a good PT can be a very subjective thing, like how some people define their personal trainer as Good. One persons good may be another persons bad.

But there are a few key issues that can be central to determining wether your PT is good for you.

Firstly you need to consider your side of the relationship. What are you seeing them for - short term relief? Or do you want to have a longer term solution to your problem. Is a longer term solution possible for your problem?

This is a question that you should ask your PT before getting them to help you - do they believe they can help find a solution to your problem which you can maintain yourself independantly?

You participation in the PT treatment is cruical. The best PT treatments are ones that you will do yourself and the PT will train you in what to do and how to do them for yourself. Often the exercises you are given will in the short term be painful - always pay careful attention to your PT's advice on when to stop if it is painful. In some cases you need to persevere with exercises that can be painful, keep doing them as you are directed and in time you will see results.

A good PT will give you exercises with clear directions on how you can do them yourself.

If you are going for short term relief, they will probably massage your muscles, perhaps put you on a machine. Thats fine as long as you dont end up in a dependant relationship where you keep needing them to give you quick fixes in order to keep going. In this case they should be teaching you ways to help yourself.

It depends on the status of your injury how much exercise you will be able to do.

When I was at my worst I could only do very simple exercises. Sometimes you will need to wait until the worst stage has passed before you can start doing exercises to get better.

Look for PT's that also help sports people or atheletes - they have an approach where you will need to take more responsibility for your progress which can lead to better long term results.

Hope this post may help someone :)
Wishing you all the best in your recovery.