As Coronavirus is changing the way the whole world lives and works - we all need to do the same. At Physio Inverness, we have looked at the options of how we can continue to provide a high quality service to our patients. The more we have looked into online consultations, the more we see that this is a real opportunity to utilise this as a new, safe and convenient service.
Telehealth consultations are generally no different to a normal consultation. You will be given a time slot, we will take a detailed history of your issue and offer you a diagnosis and treatment plan for you to undertake at home.
What is telehealth? Telehealth basically means communication through a digital method - whether that is a phone call or video call (Skype, Facetime, Whatsapp or Zoom as examples). You would be given an appointment time the same as if you were physically coming to the clinic and your physiotherapist would call you at that time.
Video physiotherapy consultations have been researched in medical journals and compared with face-to-face consultations and have actually been shown to have the same, if not better outcomes. Reasons behind this have been that you, as patients become empowered how to self assess and monitor your injury and become independent with the management and rehabilitation of your injury, all the time feeling supported by your physiotherapist.
So you may wonder how as physiotherapists we can successfully assess and treat through a video consultation? Well, we actually gather a lot of our information and attain our diagnosis using our clinical reasoning skills from what you as patients tell us from our questioning about your injury. From this, we then have a really strong idea of what your injury is and how it should be managed before we've asked you to go through any movements or testing.
The movements and testing is normally to confirm what we are already thinking as part of a working diagnosis on what your injury may be. During the video consultation you will likely then be asked to do some tests and movements that can be explained to you to do under our guidance, and you would be spoken through this.
Your physiotherapist will talk you through your diagnosis, advice on how to manage your condition/injury and exercises to help you progress with a rehabilitation programme. We use online software to email your exercise programme to you which comes complete with videos on how to perform the exercises, an online tracker to keep you motivated and following your rehabilitation.
If we feel you require an assessment by our strength and conditioning coach we can also arrange for a telehealth consultation with him, and he can guide you through a dynamic movement assessment without the need for any home gym equipment. We will post separately with more details about our online strength and conditioning service.
Another major benefit to teleleath physiotherapy consultations is that geography is no barrier. So, whether you are just down the road from our clinic in Inverness, or you live in Stornoway or Gairloch then you can access our services without the hassle or cost involved with travelling.
If you have any questions about our new telehealth service then please get in touch with us by emailing fiona@physioinverness.com or calling us on the clinic number 07470639020. To book your appointment just click the big green button below or click here
We look forward to seeing you 'virtually'!
Stay well, and socially distanced,
Fiona Houston
Chartered Physiotherapist
Founder of Physio Inverness