COVID-19 has created many challenges for us all. The need for us to all support social distancing has meant life has changed, and physiotherapy practice is no different. While we have stopped seeing patients at Complete. Physio Exercise Performance in the clinic, this is not all bad. We are continuing to offer Telehealth (e.g. video consultation) service to keep you active. Many people’s immediate response is how a video consultation with a physiotherapist work? Actually, there are many advantages for you to consider, and these may just outweigh the potential challenges. Let us know how what is working (or not) for you with Telehealth or if you have any questions contact us on our Facebook page, or feel free to get in touch on email. Given below is a table comparing the advantages versus challenges of Telehealth and we can clearly see the positives outweigh the challenges at multiple levels. Hence, keep yourself injury free and Contact us to book a Telehealth appointment should you need assistance with any injuries.

Advantages of Telehealth Physiotherapy

  • There is detailed understanding of patient beliefs and their understanding of their problems
  • Saving on travelling time
  • No travelling / parking cost
  • Treatment sessions are still a shared experience between the physiotherapist and the patient like our face to face consults
  • Convenience of health Provision within the home environment  –  This means the physio can see you undertake the exercises in your home environment with the equipment you have at home
  • There is equal quality of care as we can still deliver exercise and education via Telehealth which are key recommended treatments for any injuries. Exercise and strengthening programs are the key  for long term recovery
  • There is evidence that the outcomes can be as good with face to face and Telehealth
  • Opportunity for patients living remotely /overseas  to access their physiotherapist via digital health
  • Opportunity for  patients who can’t attend the clinic to be able to access their physio from the comfort of their home or work

Challenges of Telehealth

  • One of the key challenges is not being able to put our hands on for assessment but in a vast majority of conditions diagnosis can be made easily with a good history and a couple of simple tests which we can  ask you to do via Telehealth
  • Limited experience of clinicians with Telehealth  but at Complete we have clinicians with extensive practical and research experience in Telehealth
  • We have a strong emphasis at Complete. Physio Exercise Performance on helping you to manage you pain or injuries through exercise and lifestyle changes, and thus do not often need to provide hands on treatment to optimise your care – thus Telehealth rarely provides challenges to the treatments we provide. If massage or mobilisation techniques can help you, we will teach you how to perform them yourself.