Verwood Physiotherapy

Those niggling aches and pains don’t easily clear up by themselves, do they? Especially if your lifestyle involves carrying on doing the things that may well have contributed to the problem in the first place – like long hours spent at your desk or behind the wheel.

And left untreated, even minor aches and pains can quickly get worse or turn into more complex conditions as your body tries to compensate for the injury.

That’s why people come to us for successful treatment of a wide range of conditions from back, neck and sciatic pain to headaches, discomfort in arms or legs, and sports injuries.

You can count on our experienced, qualified physiotherapists to get to the root of your problem quickly and treat you using physical techniques including manual therapy and exercises. By improving your posture and movement we’ll help you increase mobility, flexibility and strength and get you back to your full potential fast – with sound advice to stop your problem reoccurring.

Back and neck pain

Back pain, neck pain and sciatica are common conditions but with many different causes – from bad posture and falling asleep in an awkward position to repeated lifting and twisting or sports-related injuries. Tingling, numbness and aching in the legs or arms are often associated with spinal dysfunction and need to be checked out speedily.

Lower limbs

Our lower legs, ankles and feet are complex structures. The foot alone has more than 26 bones, 33 joints and over 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Even if you’re not an athlete, your feet take a heavy workload to support, move and balance the rest of your body. We’ll study your symptoms closely to identify likely causes and possible treatment options which may include pelvic alignment, foot biomechanics and muscle balance.

Shoulders and arms

Wrist pain, hand pain, frozen shoulder, tennis elbow, shoulder impingement – the list of common complaints affecting upper limbs is literally as long as your arm! Physiotherapy is ideal for retraining shoulder movement, remobilising the joint, and relieving impingement of trapped tendons. It’s the same for tendonitis in the form of tennis or golfer’s elbow caused by inflammation of structures of the elbow and with wrist and hand pain. Physiotherapy can help to reduce the pain of inflammation and retrain movement.

Headaches

Many people come to us with headaches caused by stress, tension, poor posture or injury. When the upper spine and associated muscles become tight and dysfunctional, headaches can often be the result.

Sports injuries

We love all sports – but they do carry the risk of injuries (sometimes through overuse) from knee ligament problems and ankle ligament sprains to muscular strains, tennis elbow, groin pain, hip pain, and tendonitis. All these debilitating conditions respond well to physiotherapy, and we treat everyone from young footballers to professional athletes and older recreational runners. Our exercise rehabilitation programmes often involve coaches and parents who are part of the team!

“Having suffered back pain from February which was severely restricting my activities I was delighted to see Tina for a thorough assessment. The treatment I have had has been excellent and has solved my problem. Tina has been friendly but professional and has explained exactly what she is doing and what I can do to help myself.”
– Ann Livingstone

During your first physiotherapy appointment with us we’ll take the time to look with you at the full history of your condition, as well as your lifestyle and general medical history. We’ll find out everything we can about your symptoms, including when they’re at their best and their worst. We’ll approach your body as a whole – assessing your structure as well as your functional movements to get to the root of the problem, and tapping if need be into a range of other Body Consultancy specialisations including chiropractic, osteopathy, podiatry and massage therapy.

All this will help your physio to recommend the most effective individual treatment plan that will work best for you.

Analysing your body movement

Your Body Consultancy physio will treat you holistically. That means we’ll assess very closely how you move – taking into account the function of your body and its controlling systems as a complex machine.

To help us do this you’ll need to undress to your underwear.* Your physio will then be able to look at how you walk, how you stand, if you place your feet correctly, whether you’re rounding your shoulders, and so on. The purpose of this in-depth physical examination is to help us find the exact cause of your problem, and reduce the chances of it recurring.

* We have private changing facilities and will provide you with a gown to wear over your underwear. If you’re unable to undress for religious or other reasons, please talk about this with our reception staff and your physio before your appointment. Headgear of any kind does not normally present a problem.

Recommending your treatment

After completing your assessment and examination, your physio will explain what’s wrong and recommend a plan – including an outline of roughly how many treatments you may need. Blood, urine and other laboratory tests are sometimes needed, and if so your physio will discuss them with you at the time. If they diagnose a problem that won’t benefit from physiotherapy treatment, they’ll refer you elsewhere without delay.

“My experience with the physiotherapist Tina has been fantastic. From the start she has been highly professional, friendly and knowledgeable. Her treatment and recommended exercises has resulted in a 85% improvement in four sessions.”
– Melanie Strachan

Your physiotherapist may well find restriction and irritation in the joints and muscles of your body. To deal with these, your individual treatment plan will be specifically designed to reduce your discomfort and then mobilise, adjust and strengthen your body to prevent your injury from reoccurring.

This is likely to involve soft tissue work such as massage and stretching, but may also include other techniques to reduce inflammation and correct problems caused by unwelcome adaptations or overcompensations.

By the end of your short initial treatment plan you should be feeling very much better and symptom-free in most cases. Your physio will then work with you to create a plan of action and/or exercise programme to further reduce or eradicate your condition.

Continuing care

If the cause of your complaint is something like poor posture, your working environment or some other complication that would be harder to change permanently, then you may have to manage the problem. This means it may be necessary to continue maintenance visits at regular intervals – a bit like having your teeth checked regularly by your dentist.

Your plan is also likely to include changes in your lifestyle that can help you to keep fit, healthy and pain-free – for example exercises and stretches to do at home.

There’s good evidence that manual therapy paired with exercise therapy produces the best results for many conditions.

You can count on your physio to monitor your progress back to full health, continue to guide you on home exercises, and give you other aftercare advice.

“Treatment was very effective and I felt an improvement even after the first session. Treated a back problem and a long standing problem with my neck – both better than they have been for years. Very pleased.”
– Anonymous

Governed by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), physiotherapists help people affected by injury, illness or disability through movement and exercise, manual therapy, education and advice. They maintain health for people of all ages, helping patients to manage pain and prevent disease.

Working to reduce restrictions and pain within the body, physiotherapists treat a wide variety of musculoskeletal injuries or conditions that affect the bones, ligaments, muscles, tendons and joints.

The profession helps to encourage development and facilitate recovery, enabling people to stay active and in work while helping them to remain independent for as long as possible.

Physiotherapy is a degree-based healthcare profession. Physios use their knowledge and skills to improve a range of conditions associated with different systems of the body such as:

  • Neurological (stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s)
  • Neuro-musculoskeletal (back pain, whiplash associated disorder, sports injuries, arthritis)
  • Cardiovascular (chronic heart disease, rehabilitation after heart attack)
  • Respiratory (asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis).

Multi-disciplinary approach

As well as expertise in physiotherapy, we can refer you within our clinic to professionally qualified chiropractors, osteopaths, sports therapists and massage therapists. We also have an excellent relationship with local consultants and surgeons.

Disease screening

As primary care practitioners, we’re trained to screen for and refer any very serious medical conditions. We don’t treat life threatening disease. Prolonged pain with no specific onset should always be investigated further because many illnesses first show up as aches and pains.

Service
Price

15 minute consultation

Free

Initial consultation and treatment
Under 18

£65
£61

Standard follow up treatment
Under 18

£45
£41

Rehab or Internal Referral
Under 18

£65
£58

Our three phases of care

Treat – professional assessment

We believe in working with the whole person – not just the painful area. So we’ll spend time really understanding not only your current symptoms, but your daily activities, interests, experiences and goals. This phase involves regular bi-weekly treatment, normally lasting between two and four weeks depending on the duration and complexity of your complaint. We’ll then agree with you what we see as the most likely timetable and commitment from you during the next phase.

Stabilise – stability

We’ll advise you on what needs to change in the way you, move and hold yourself so that your problem doesn’t re-occur. We’ll help you build new habits to support your continued progress to full mobility and movement – while being realistic about what’s possible and what improvements are likely. But we can’t do the exercises for you, or be there to remind you about your posture at your desk, in the car or in front of the TV … so this phase calls for your active participation. The treatments in this phase are weekly, fortnightly or monthly, depending on how chronic and complex your condition is. Normally though, treatment intervals quickly spread apart. Our philosophy is that you hold the key to the success of the treatments and rehabilitation phases of care.

Maintain – ongoing movement

Our role here is to engage and empower you and your body to do what’s natural. So you need to in to confirm that what we planned together is still possible and working. You’ll stay fully supported by professionals who are on your side for getting the very best out of what life has to offer. This ongoing phase is usually especially important for conditions we refer to as chronic (over 6 month), sub-acute (over 3 months) or acute (last few weeks) with significant re occuring previous episodes.

Ready to change your movement?

We know you may want to check us out and get a feel for us before you commit! That’s why we offer any new client thinking of coming to us a short free initial assessment. Click the “Get in touch” button below to get the contact details to call or email us to book today at a time that suits you!

Our physiotherapy team