Celebrate Physical Therapy Month by Promoting Safe Pain Management in Your Community

This October, celebrate National Physical Therapy Month in your practice by promoting physical therapy as a safe pain management technique in your community.

None of the individuals in your community want to live in pain. Unfortunately, pain affects more people than diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, combined.

Pain is so prevalent that it has been officially cited as the single most common reason people reach out to the healthcare system for assistance.

Not only is pain the top cause of disability, it results in an immense amount of costs in the healthcare system.

Right now, there is one person out of every four in your community that is suffering from pain that lasts longer than 24 hours straight, at the minimum.

You can help these individuals now by encouraging them to engage in physical therapy, which is the safest pain management technique.

Prescriptions Simply Mask Pain

For those suffering from pain, medical doctors will often prescribed medications. These prescriptions only mask the pain; they do not get to the source of the pain or resolve the pain. Opioids are the most common type of prescription issued for pain.

Many risks are associated with opioids.

These include – but, are not at all limited to – the development of addiction/dependency on the medication, the development of depression and other mood-related disorders, accidental overdose, and withdrawal symptoms when usage is stopped.

These prescriptions carry so much potential dangers that the Centers for Disease Control is encouraging individuals to seek out safer pain management alternatives, such as physical therapy.

The Benefits of Physical Therapy for Pain Management

As National Physical Therapy Month draws closer, your practice should be promoting your services in your community. There are several distinct advantages associated with using physical therapy. These include:

• When one suffers from pain, it often relates to the physiological functionality of the lower back, the hips, the knees, and other components of the body. Physical therapy helps patients optimize the functionality of these core components so that pain is reduced.
• As a physical therapist, you are an expert in movements. You have the capability of identifying, diagnosing, and treating problems relating to movement. This helps patients to improve their overall quality of life, reduce the pain that they experience, and live a more independent life.
• As a physical therapy specialist, you collaborate with both patients that are suffering from pain and their medical care providers to improve outcomes. During collaboration, you create a customized care plan that is based on each patient’s challenges, the needs that they have, and their individual goals.
• Physical therapy aids in reducing the need for surgery, which often results in more pain for the patient. This is done by helping a patient recover from complications such as tears in the muscles and tissues, arthritis, spinal stenosis, and disc disease.

Create a Community Outreach Plan Today

October is National Physical Therapy Month. Now is the time to create a community outreach plan. Simply promote your services, with a focus on safe pain management techniques.

You can check out the resources for last year. APTA and MoveForwardPT have great campaign ideas to get you started such as this banner: