Specialists in Solving Musculoskeletal Injury and Pain
Providing Physiotherapy services to North West Tasmania since 1998
Physiotherapy helps you get the most out of life.
Did you know that GPs refer more patients to physiotherapists than any other healthcare profession?
Physiotherapy combines hands on treatment with exercise rehabilitation to help restore your full function and mobility. Using advanced techniques and evidence-based care, physiotherapists assess, diagnose, treat and prevent a wide range of health conditions and movement disorders.
The team at Coastal Physiotherapy are skilled in all aspects of physiotherapy treatment extending from health promotion to injury prevention, acute care, rehabilitation, maintenance of functional mobility, chronic disease management, patient and carer education and occupational health.
What Should I Expect from a Physiotherapy Appointment?
1. Comprehensive assessment and diagnosis of your condition.
Your first consultation will generally be longer than follow up appointments, as your physiotherapist will need to conduct a comprehensive assessment. The main aim here is to determine the overall cause of your problem rather than a focus on the temporary management of your symptoms. This assessment will involve a process of taking your history, a thorough physical assessment and looking at the way you move and function.
2. Developing an individual treatment or prevention plan.
Taking into account your lifestyle, daily activities and general health, subsequent treatment options will be fully outlined, so that you are fully aware of the processes involved to get you moving again. At this stage, its our focus to help you determine, set and maintain your goals, whether that’s maintaining mobility and independence in aged care, returning to work or running a marathon.
3. Hands on treatment combined with a targeted exercise program.
At your following sessions we will use hands on treatment to get you moving well. We will teach you the most effective exercise program to help you manage your condition effectively in between sessions. We will provide you with the best strategies to ensure that your condition not only gets better, but also stays better.
What are the different physiotherapy options?
When we ask someone to explain the role of physiotherapy, often the response is something along the lines of “for the management of a sporting injury or workplace accident rehabilitation”, however this is only a small component of physiotherapy treatment options available at our clinics. Physiotherapists extend their care to chronic health impacts, like heart disease and diabetes, and lesser-known pelvic floor issues. Every member of the Coastal Physio team are experts in helping to reduce the common health and safety issues associated with working in labour intensive industries such as mining and agriculture. Our focus is on preventing injury as well as getting people back to work quickly and safely.
Physiotherapy is a complex specialty, as it deals with all disciplines of medicine, some of which include:
- dry needling
- hydrotherapy
- cancer, palliative care and lymphoedema
- cardiorespiratory
- gerontology & aged care
- mental health
- musculoskeletal
- neurological
- occupational health
- orthopaedic
- paediatric
- pain management
- sports physio
- women’s, men’s and pelvic health
Did you know that physiotherapists are classified as primarly health care practitioners? This means you can make an appointment as a private patient without requiring a referral from a GP or specialist. Book an assessment to activate your health.
Hands On Physio for Injury and Pain
Physiotherapy aims to ease pain and improve performance. Coastal Physiotherapy prides itself in offering best practice ‘hands-on’ Physiotherapy treatment to residents of North West Tasmania. Our evidence-based hands on treatment techniques are essential in helping to restore full function and mobility. Successful treatment outcomes rely on integrating this hands on treatment with the most up-to-date exercise rehabilitation program, enabling you to manage your condition at home.
Your treatment routine may include combinations of the following:
- Joint mobilization and manipulation
- Soft and deep tissue massage
- Trigger point release
- Muscle energy techniques
- Taping
- Acupuncture/ Dry Needling
- Development of injury related exercise programs
- Assistance with use of aids, splints, crutches, walking sticks and wheelchairs to help you move around.
What is Real Time Ultrasound Physiotherapy?
Ultrasound physiotherapy is used in muscle retraining. Retrain your core whilst watching your muscles activate in real time!
Deep stabilizing muscles are essential for good spinal health and for protecting and stabilizing the low back. If you’ve experienced episodes of chronic low back pain, acute back pain or undergone spinal surgery, these stabilizing muscles become weak and inactive. Due to the inactivity of these muscles and lack of support to the low back, the patient may experience ongoing pain, with the incidence of re-injury becoming higher and future recovery becoming lengthier.
Combining hands on techniques to help alleviate your current pain levels and enhance their range of movement, and use RTUS to assess and educate patients regarding the activation of their deep stabilizing muscles. RTUS will assist patients to recruit and strengthen their weakened stabilizing muscles to ensure an earlier and safe recovery. Patients will be given immediate visual feedback as they watch the muscles they need to activate on the screen next to them, which will allow for a better understanding of that is required for their recovery.
Retraining of the deep abdominal and back, and pelvic floor musculature.
The Transversus Abdominis is the deepest abdominal muscle. It is the corset muscle of the pelvis. In the normal situation it contracts in anticipation of body motion to guard the joints, ligaments, discs and nerves of the spine and pelvis.
The first time a patient suffers from low back pain appears to inhibit the normal activity of this muscle. Once the back pain has resolved this muscle may not automatically switch on again unless specific retraining/movement pattern exercises are prescribed. Other causes of muscle inhibition include past abdominal surgery, pelvic pain and post pregnancy.
The poor response of the transversus abdominis muscle is thought to expose the spine to further trauma and hence recurrent back attacks. Each incident becomes a little more severe and consequently further inhibition of the transversus abdominis occurs.
As the transversus abdominis lies deep in the abdominal region, it is difficult to visualise or feel hence the use of an ultrasound machine.
The real-time ultrasound machine provides important visual feedback to the patient to assist in isolating the muscle and contracting it correctly independently of the other abdominal muscle groups. Once the patient can achieve the correct contraction more difficult exercises can be added to incorporate the transversus abdominis.
Along similar lines the multifidus (deep back) and pelvic floor muscles can also be facilitated with ultrasound retraining. Once these muscles are found to be contracting correctly, patients can then progress to PILATES or a GYM BASED EXERCISE program.
Sports Physiotherapy
As a Sports Physiotherapist it is vital to understand the person and his or her sport. An Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) sports physiotherapist can help you achieve your best by:
- Optimising your return to sports after injury
- Advising you how to increase your fitness
- Analysing your sporting technique
- Improving your posture and resolving muscle imbalances
- Increasing your flexibility
- Improving your muscle strength and control
- Prescribing a specific exercise program for ongoing management
- Providing immediate care of injuries on and off the field
- Advising on sports injury management and prevention
- Enhancing your sporting performance.
- Screening for potential musculskeletal problems.
Damien Moore is an APA Registered Sports Physiotherapist with a broad range of experience and can be consulted 5 days a week at the Burnie clinic for all of your sports injury concerns.
What is a Medicare Enhanced Primary Health Care Plan?
Your General Practitioner (GP) can refer you to Coastal Physiotherapy under Medicare’s Enhanced Primary Health Care Plan. This allows you 5 treatments from any allied health practitioner (including Physiotherapists and Exercise Physiologists) per calendar year funded by Medicare.
You must have a chronic condition (have had the condition or likely to be present for more than 6 months) including arthritis, diabetes, chronic pain and respiratory diseases and be on a GP management plan. Talk to your GP or practice nurse or ring our Burnie office on 64314586 for further information.
For further information about the Enhanced Primary Health Care Plan, also known as Chronic Disease Management – GP Services, go to the Australian Government’s Department of Health website here: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/mbsprimarycare-chronicdiseasemanagement
Did you know our Physiotherapists are registered with the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and can provide services to people who qualify under the NDIA?