First Session Treatment
- 1. A DETAILED CASE HISTORY
- 2. An ASSESSMENT of posture, muscles and joints (and painful areas (you will be asked to undress to your underwear)
- 3. A course of TREATMENTS (generally three or more)
- 4. ADVICE and REHABILITATION exercises
- 5. LIFE STYLE CHANGES which all help a patient to quickly recover from pain and/or injury.
A CASE HISTORY consists of asking questions about the present and previous injuries with dates (and previous medical history) helping us to chronologically order your past history helping us to understand the journey your body has taken through life.
By understanding your chronological past history and the way your body has tried to adapt to these changes, helps us to base our hypothesis/ diagnosis on the root cause of the problem based on your past history. By doing this we attempt to treat the PERSON as a whole rather than treat just the symptoms, this is a holistic approach.
To build up this chronological past history we may ask you FURTHER QUESTIONS about work posture, hobbies, previous injuries, past operations, stressful periods in your life, this information you wouldn’t consider important but to a trained therapist this helps to build up a profile of how your body has adapted over time helping towards forming a diagnosis and moulding the treatment on our findings.
An Osteopathic case history may include FURTHER MEDICAL QUESTIONS, this is to ensure that the source of your pain is not from other parts of the body like your hip joint, your Gastro Intestinal system, Gastro Urinal system etc. as these pains can often appear as back pain. These question may sound intrusive but need to be asked in order to get a correct diagnosis.
AN ASSESSMENT involves assessing posture, the range of movement of joints, locating stiff muscles and painful areas as well as muscle and joint testing; . You will be asked to undress down to your underwear so if you are self-conscious, wear underwear you feel comfortable being treated in, or we can offer a disposable gown although its often difficult to assess posture.
AN OSTEOPATHIC TREATMENT will involve gentle massage of key muscles, the release of stiff joints throughout your body through movement or manipulation / mobilisation, releasing tissues through cranial osteopathy or myofascial release techniques.
PREVENTATIVE ADVICE is given to minimise the risk of re-injury this is coupled with mobility and rehabilitation exercises in between treatments to improve range of movement of joints and strengthen muscles that have reduced in size, strength and efficiency.
LIFESTYLE CHANGES such as breathing retraining, regular stretching, incorporating resting and relaxation times as well as core strength exercises.