The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has an ongoing public awareness campaign, aimed at improving the general public's and the overall medical profession's perception of physiotherapy. The title of the campaign is: "Physiotherapy Works!".

In this blog post I thought I would like to show exactly how well physiotherapy can work to improve the life of a patient but I want to note that whilst physiotherapy does indeed work, it often needs a large amount of perseverance from our patients.

This physiotherapy case study looks at the improvements in an ongoing patient of ThreeSpires Physiotherapy and the huge improvements that she has made since starting a course of home visit physiotherapy. Mrs X initially contacted us at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy approximately 18months ago after being discharged from Samuel Johnson Hospital in Lichfield, she had received a few sessions of NHS physiotherapy but unfortunately these had dried up and now she was completely bed bound and receiving 4 care visits daily.

She had initially been admitted to hospital following a series of falls at home and had over a period of years become weaker, finally she had been taken to hospital following another fall and an illness which then necessitated a lengthy stay in hospital. During her time in hospital she was medically unwell and despite efforts by the physiotherapy team to mobilise her and improve her fitness, by the time she was sent home she was completely unable to walk and required hoist transfers. At this point things looked very bleak for Mrs X's future but being a remarkable woman with a significant amount of mental strength she decided to contact us and see if we might be able to help improve her situation.

The initial physiotherapy assessment did indeed paint a fairly bleak picture, she was extremely weak, had severe osteo-arthritis in both hips, knees and shoulders and was unable to even attain a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Mrs X stated that her goal was to walk with her zimmer frame from her bed to the front lounge. Now, I am very much an optimist and will always try to look positively on the goals that patients have, even if I consider them to be a bit unrealistic, as very often patients will surprise me and surpass what I thought was possible. However, in this case I felt that I needed to explain to her that I thought this unlikely to be possible given her current state and the length of time she had been immobilised for. Mrs X would hear none of this and stated that she would indeed walk to the front room (as I said, she is a remarkable woman) and I agreed that we would try our best to make this goal possible.

Now, I would like to say that after a few weeks and using some magical physiotherapy techniques Mrs X was able to jump out of bed and walk to the front room and that she is now in training for the London Marathon- cue inspiring music.

Unfortunately that kind of stuff only happens in the movies. What actually happened is that we began working on her ability to sit unaided on the edge of the bed, progressed from there to standing with a frame and from there to attempting to walk with a frame. This process has taken us 18 months of hard work and effort, with a large number of set backs along the way and we still have not quite made it to the front room. We have however recently got very close (within a couple of feet) and she is now able to sit well at the edge of the bed, step around to a chair and walk with a zimmer frame (although not quite as far as she would like). Hopefully sometime in the next few months we will have achieved her goal of walking to the front room, something that in all honesty I never really believed was actually possible. This will be an enormous achievement for Mrs X and is a tribute to her resilience, strength of character and good old fashioned pig-headedness (she really has never contemplated giving up!).

As a physiotherapist Mrs X's improvements have reminded me that physiotherapy really can make a huge difference to the quality of life of our patients given enough dedication and hard work. Physiotherapy does indeed work but only with perseverance!

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this blog post. For anyone reading this blog who hasn't come across our site before: we are a home visit physiotherapy service, based in Lichfield but serving anywhere within a 25 minute drive including areas such as Sutton Coldfield, Tamworth, Cannock, Burton and Rugeley. We offer a wide range of services including paediatric physiotherapy, post-operative rehabilitation, neurological physiotherapy and neck and back pain relief. If you need further information or would like to book an appointment we can be contacted on 0788 428 1623 or via enquiries@threespiresphysiotherapy.co.uk