General Physical Therapy Questions

What is physical therapy?

Physical therapy is an interactive, hands-on treatment approach. It involves the patient and the therapist working together to promote healing and eliminate the underlying problems, including pain, weakness, poor movement control and balance. It can address one area or multiple areas of the body.

Physical therapy includes careful analysis of the underlying injury or problem, custom techniques or treatments performed by the physical therapist to reduce pain and improve movement and exercises to improve strength, joint motion, flexibility, balance and movement control.

Physical therapy is more than just exercising. It’s rooted in western medicine and is based on scientific principles with applied knowledge of human anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, biomechanics, kinesiology (study of movement), psychology and neurology. It combines the diagnosis of specific conditions or injuries and analysis of movement with a personalized approach that considers a person’s psychological, social and family support situation for the best patient outcome.

What are the benefits of physical therapy?

Physical therapy has been shown to reduce pain, decrease the need for surgery, reduce the need for addictive medications, improve long-term strength and movement, allow patients to continue normal activities and cut total medical costs by decreasing unnecessary tests and procedures.

The greatest benefits of physical therapy happen when people go directly to the therapist before seeing their primary care provider. This allows the therapist to start patients on the road to recovery.

What training do you need to be a physical therapist?

Currently physical therapy training includes four years of undergraduate education, often in a science or health-related field and three years of graduate school. Then, they need to pass a board exam to become a Doctor of Physical Therapy. A small number of physical therapists (11% nationally) go further to complete specialist training as a board-certified clinical specialist. Excel Physical Therapy has a team of Doctors of Physical Therapy with board certifications in orthopedic physical therapy, keeping us the top-rated physical therapy in Oshkosh.