PT-Helper's February Blog Posts for Physical Therapists

How to Introduce the PT-Helper App to a Patient

Published on February 6th, 2018

With patient home exercise compliance at extreme lows, understanding what motivates your patients will help improve their home exercise compliance. Not everyone is the same and getting them engaged requires understanding what motivates them. Decreasing the hurdles that prevent them from doing their home exercises with the PT-Helper mobile app while letting them know that they're being observed may further improve their behavior.

A PT Home Exercise Program for a Hip Injury from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Published on February 13th, 2018

We’ve curated these seven exercises, shared by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, into a Home Exercise Program (HEP) using the PT-Helper CONNECT tool and prescribed via the PT-Helper mobile app. A sample HEP program can be evaluated on the PT-Helper mobile app with code 45242F3C.

The Unexpected Ways to Lead a Physical Therapy Patient to Recovery

Published on February 20th, 2018

Creating a fun and supportive environment is one way to motivate your patients to do their home exercises resulting in better outcomes. Establishing a new exercise habit for your patients can lead to consistent behavior.

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The Unexpected Ways to Lead a Physical Therapy Patient to Recovery

A large number of people will see a physical therapist for the first time after an illness, injury or surgery. They will often be in pain with limited mobility and strength. It is often assumed that the patient wants to get better and that this is sufficient reason that will drive their self motivation to recovery.

However, when the road to recovery for physical therapy patients includes home exercises to improve range of motion and physical strength, these exercises are often never completed.

How does one overcome this hurdle?

One of the challenges is to recognize that many patients do not have a regular exercise routine. In the 2014 CDC Report on Physical Activity, 1 in 4 Americans never exercise at all and only about 50% of the national population meet the minimum aerobic exercise guidelines. Getting your patient to do their home exercises will be a process of creating a new habit.

According to experts, it takes about 21 days to form a habit. In “7 Steps to Developing a New Habit”, Brian Tracy identifies the first step as Making a Decision. This decision has to be made by the patient and not by the therapist. Asking your patients to make this decision and having them verbalize this decision and why it’s important to their health will be a big step towards home exercise compliance.

Another point to recognize is that it is better to exercise with a friend which may be why patients will do their exercises in a clinic or gym environment but not at home. The sense of accountability while they are in the clinic drives their behavior. Of course, they can’t go to the clinic everyday. To help extend accountability to their home exercises, you can help them set a time during the day when they need to do their home exercises.

Creating a fun environment can also motivate your patients to do their exercises. 

One clinic that deals with a lot of young ACL surgery patients has a large bell that the patient gets to ring when they are able to bring their heel to their butt. It creates a reward mechanism for the patient and allows other patients to share goals in their recovery process.

Technology can also be used to increase patient compliance. In a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 77% of Americans now own smartphones.  Smartphone home exercise program (HEP) apps can help your patients remember when to do their exercises and walk them through their exercises alleviating the burden of counting hold times, repetitions and sets. The PT-Helper mobile app will also keep track of when your patients complete their exercises providing you with the opportunity to extend accountability for your patients.

Start your Free 30-day Trial of the PT-Helper CONNECT tool for physical therapists and other therapy providers, so you too may create and prescribe HEPs that can easily be synchronized with the PT-Helper mobile app.

A PT Home Exercise Program for a Hip Injury from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

We have curated seven exercises from the Hip Conditioning Program shared by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons into a Home Exercise Program (HEP) using the PT-Helper CONNECT platform and presented on the PT-Helper mobile app. These exercises may help you return to daily activities after a hip injury or surgery.

Exercises can also be used pre-surgery to strengthen your muscles which can help you with a speedy recovery.

These exercises can be quickly synchronized with the PT-Helper mobile app using

HEP code 45242F3C. 

You can also find these exercises in the Knee & Hip category in the PT-Helper mobile app to add to your Favorites which allows you to customize each exercise’s repetitions, sets, and hold time.

Reminder: Please consult your physician before engaging in any physical activity and stop if you experience pain or discomfort.

EXERCISES INCLUDED:

1. IT Band Stretch 


From a standing position, cross your un-affected leg in front of your affected affected leg. Lean forward and away from your affected side. You will feel a stretch on the outer portion of your hip.




2. Seated Rotation Stretch


Sit on the floor with both legs straight in front of you. Cross one leg over the other. Slowly twist toward your bent leg, putting your hand behind you for support. Place your opposite arm on your bent thigh and use it to help you twist further. Slowly come back to center. Reverse leg positions and repeat the stretch on the other side.




3. Single Knee to Chest


Lie on your back with both knees straight. Slowly bring one knee up, grab with hands and gently pull towards your chest. Hands can be under or over the front of your knee. You will feel a stretch in your lower back and buttocks.




4. Supine Hamstring Stretch


While lying on your back, lift one leg and grasp it from behind with both hands or a towel. Pull your knee toward your chest. Straighten the leg to the point of tightness in the back of your thigh. Hold and then lower leg back down.




5. Sidelying Straight Leg Raise Abduction


Lie on your side with top leg straight, bottom leg can be slightly bent at knee.  Tighten front thigh muscles of your top leg, keep leg straight and raise leg no higher than 45 degrees.  Keep shoulder, hip, knee and ankle in one straight line.  Stay under control, slow is better; feel outside of hip working.




6. Sidelying Straight Leg Raise Adduction


Lie on your side, bend top leg and place foot in front of other knee. Bottom leg is straight, tighten front thigh quad muscle, raise bottom leg up a few inches while keeping it straight. Keep shoulder, hip, knee and ankle of moving leg in one straight line. Keep thigh tight on the way down too!




7. Prone Extension


Lie on your stomach with your knee bent at 90 degrees. Lift your thigh up off the table or floor while making sure not to arch your lower back. Return to starting position. Repeat.

HIP EXERCISE DEMO, AS VIEWED ON THE PT-HELPER MOBILE APP

Start your Free 30-day Trial of the PT-Helper CONNECT tool for physical therapists and other therapy providers, so you too may create and prescribe Home Exercise Programs like the one shown above.

Click here to view all knee & hip exercises currently available within the PT-Helper Exercise Library.

How to Introduce the PT-Helper App to a Patient

Physical therapy outcomes and patient happiness are very dependent upon the patient’s home exercise compliance. However, it is well recognized that up to 70% of physical therapy patients fail to comply with their home exercise program (HEP).

So, how do you get your patients to do their home exercises?

One approach is to understand how your patients are motivated as Christine Comaford writes in “How To Influence Anyone, Any Time, Anywhere: 4 Subconscious Secrets”.  Are they motivated to achieve goals or motivated to avoid risk and pain? You might want to ask your patients, “What do you want from physical therapy?”

If they respond with “get”, “attain” and “achieve” then these words will help you engage your patient to target goals with their home exercises.

If they respond with “avoid” and “prevent”, you may want to reinforce that you are there to help them avoid pain. A very good friend once told me that she was experiencing shoulder pain and went to see a physical therapist who gave her home exercises. Unfortunately, she didn’t do them as they were not high on her priority list. The next time she went back to therapy, her therapist told her that if she doesn’t do her home exercises, her pain might result in a frozen shoulder. Boy, did that light a fire under her and she did her exercises every day after that.

My therapist, Brad Stotsky at BreakOut Advisors and Rehabilitation , told me, “Once I get a patient on the table, I can tell if they’ve been doing their exercises”.  However, many patients don’t realize this and believe that they can deceive their therapist. Taking a cue from “Human Behavior: How It Changes When Knowingly Being Observed?”,  PT-Helper keeps track of when a patient completes an exercise on the app and provides an Exercise Log for the therapist.

To introduce PT-Helper to his patients, Brad Stotsky will tell his patients on their first visit, 

“We have an app for your smartphone, we don't make any money off of it but we helped create it, it’s $1.99. Our patients find it super helpful to stay on track with their exercises, especially the ones that have holds or many repetitions. Once you download it, we will give you a code that will have your personalized program."

You may want to include that the app was developed for patients, by patients and solves all of the challenges with doing their home exercises.

Once they’ve installed the app, you can then follow up with 

“I’m watching you” 

to tap into their behavior changes under the observation effect for better compliance.

Start your Free 30-Day Trial of PT-Helper CONNECT exercise prescription software and improve your patient’s compliance.