ThreeSpires Physiotherapy 2020

Hello and welcome to the first blog for ThreeSpires Physiotherapy for 2020!!  This has already been an amazingly busy start to the physiotherapy year for our home visit physiotherapy service as evidenced by how long it has taken me to get this blog done! In this blog I thought we could do our usual round up of what has been happening with our physiotherapy practice, our physiotherapists and our patients. Quite a lot has happened and there have been lots of developments in our physiotherapy service, so I think we will only really be able to look at the highlights otherwise this will be a very long read indeed.

So, what has been happening for ThreeSpires Physiotherapy in 2019 and what does 2020 hold for our home visit physiotherapy service?

1. Recap: Before going on about how the service has changed it may well be helpful for anyone new reading this blog if I say what our physiotherapy service is, what we offer and how we are different to other physiotherapy practices. So, we are a home visit physiotherapy service based in Lichfield and serving anywhere within a 20 -25 minute drive. This encompasses a really wide area and our physiotherapists see patients in Cannock, Sutton Coldfield, Rugeley, Walsall, Lichfield (obviously!), Burton and Tamworth -as I said we serve a very wide area with our physiotherapy service. We offer a large range of physiotherapy services including paediatric physiotherapy right through to elderly rehabilitation and seeing patients in care homes. We also help with musculoskeletal problems such as back pain and sporting injuries such as runner’s knee. We are very different from a traditional physiotherapy practice as we do not actually have a physical clinic and instead all of our physiotherapists go out to their patients at home which I believe offers a large number of benefits.

Okay, enough about what we do and how our physiotherapy service works, what has actually been happening over the last 12 months since the last yearly physiotherapy round up.

1. Growth: Yet again our physiotherapy service had its busiest year ever and grew by a significant margin in terms of sessions with patients and new patients to the practice. Our home visit physiotherapy service saw more patients across a wider area than ever before and in a wider range of settings than ever before. All parts of our physiotherapy service including paediatric physiotherapy, musculoskeletal physiotherapy, neurological physiotherapy and our elderly rehabilitation service saw increased numbers of patients that we were able to help. This increase in patients came from a number of sources with word of mouth, recommendations and also people reading our great reviews and testimonials being especially important. Myself and all of us at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy feel very proud of this continued growth and it clearly shows that our physios and their services are in demand and are very valued.

2. New Staff: As our physiotherapy service has expanded we have needed to recruit more physios to keep up with the demand and also to add to the wide skill set and experience that our practice has. We now have 5 physiotherapists working for us, all of whom have different skill sets, personalities and experience which helps us match the right patient with the right physiotherapist. This is a key part of our practice and is something that makes us different then seeing a small one man or woman physiotherapy practice. Having several physiotherapists means that we can do our best to match a specific need to a specific skill set to maximise the benefit to the patient and also means that if one of our physios is ill or is on holiday we can always cover them. We also have 3 physiotherapy assistants now who also offer a slightly different skill set and way of helping our patients and are ideal for helping patients who need continuing input but who no longer really need the qualifications and experience of a full physiotherapist. Our physiotherapy assistants always operate under the guidance and supervision of one of our qualified physiotherapists and are great at working with patients, ensuring that they keep doing their exercise programmes and helping them stay motivated. For patients for whom keeping going with their exercises is a real problem (either because of memory difficulties or motivation) our physiotherapy assistants are fantastic.  This is something I have touched on in a previous blog and I think that our physiotherapy assistants really offer a great service with great value for money for patients.

3. Care Home Physiotherapy: Last year we began with a weekly session at The Hawthorn’s Residential Care Home in Aldridge aimed at making sure that residents maintain their mobility. Physiotherapy for the elderly and helping patients either regain lost mobility or maintain their mobility is something that I and all of the staff here at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy are extremely passionate about and delivering physiotherapy at a care home is a fantastic way of doing this. Staff at the home are able to identify early on residents at risk of losing mobility and are able to refer into our physiotherapy service quickly and easily. Our physio is then able to assess these patients, identify why they are losing mobility and provide targeted exercises aimed at returning them to their previous level of mobility. This has continued to provide great physiotherapy and help to residents there and our physiotherapist has helped keep residents mobile, provided advice to staff and interacted and liaised with family members. As part of our continued wish to keep on helping the elderly population maintain and improve their mobility we also have plans to very soon begin a similar physiotherapy session at another care home but this time in Solihull – I will keep you posted about this.

4. More Physiotherapy Blogs: This has been a really strong part of our development as a practice and our physiotherapy blog articles are extremely popular and well read as a source of clinical information about various pathologies and also about developments in the world of health and physiotherapy generally. We have nearly 200 individual physiotherapy and health related blogs now and they cover a large range of topics from paediatric physiotherapy to how best to keep your grandparents mobile! Over the years of developing our physiotherapy blog I have tried to cover the majority of conditions or difficulties that our patients will face in order to give anyone reading some easy to read information about conditions without using any technical language. A quick look through our physiotherapy blog archive will show articles ranging from Golfer’s Elbow and Tennis Elbow through to Cerebral Palsy and Parkinson’s Disease. As we have such a wide range of patients in our physiotherapy service including the very young (toddlers) right through to much older patients in care homes this has meant that we have needed to cover an enormous range of physiotherapy and health topics. So, it really doesn’t matter if you are trying to find out more about the causes of knee pain, back pain, a sporting injury, neurological physiotherapy, the best core exercises or a specific childhood condition such as plagiocephaly our physiotherapy blog is likely to cover all of these. I would highly recommend having a look through our blogs I am sure that you will find something interesting there.

5. Social Media: Now personally I am not a great one for social medial but I recognise that the world of physiotherapy is changing and that it is necessary to move with the times. Also our patients now wish to interact with our physiotherapy practice in new ways and social media provides an opportunity to offer help and advice in a different way. As such, we have worked hard over the last 12 months to promote and develop our Facebook page and we now have approximately 600 followers which is great and this will hopefully develop even further over the next 12 months. We are always available to chat and discuss physiotherapy, health related topics or provide advice if requested and we often book patients in for an assessment via our Facebook page. Our Facebook page also provides links to our physiotherapy and health related blogs and also to any interesting bits of research that we see and think that our patients might be interested.

6. Newsletter: Last year we launched our newsletter aimed at keeping our current patients better informed with developments at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy with the idea being that it would be sent out each month. Unfortunately, work has been incredibly hectic and we have not managed to do this. However, this year we will be re-launching the newsletter and hopefully it will be a great source of information for our patients. We will be sending it out every couple of months via an email (please subscribe!!) and it will contain news and information about our physiotherapy service, latest developments, special offers and latest research from the world of physiotherapy.

 

Okay, that was a long blog! I had initially intended just to give a short run down of the things that had happened in our physiotherapy service last year but as per usual I realised whilst writing that actually quite a bit had happened in our physio practice over the last 12 months. I hope that this blog has given you an idea of the developments and changes that have taken place over the last 12 months at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy and has given you a small insight into the work that goes into delivering a high quality home visit physiotherapy service. In truth, there have been many other changes and things happening within the practice but covering everything would mean that this blog needed to run into several volumes! As ever, on behalf of all the staff and physios at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy I would like to wish you all a great and healthy 2020.