Regardless of whether you work in an office setting or you provide a more manual labor, the vast majority of Americans rely on their hands to help them with countless everyday tasks. Because of how important they are to our daily life, and considering how often we use them, it’s not surprising that the hands and wrists are some of the most commonly injured areas of our body. We often try to fight through this discomfort because it’s so hard to stop using our hands for an extended period, and that can prolong your recovery.
So what should you do if you suffer a hand or wrist injury and want to get your life back to normal? Your best bet is to connect with a certified physical therapist.
PT For Hand and Wrist Injuries
Physical therapy is considered the standard treatment option for a wide variety of hand and wrist injuries. That’s because PT works to improve and preserve a number of key functions in the area, including muscle strength, range of motion in the joint, flexibility and dexterity. It also teaches the client how certain movements can exacerbate pain and which movements provide strengthening without overstressing the area.
We start your recovery journey with an assessment of your medical evaluation and imaging results if you’ve been referred by a physician. If you’ve come straight to a physical therapist after an injury, that’s fine too. However you come to our clinic, we’re going to conduct our own evaluation of your injury and your abilities with simple movement tests. This helps us establish a baseline that we can use to develop a treatment plan. From there, we’ll work to:
- Provide you with some strength training exercises to perform in-clinic that will be supervised by our care team.
- Help establish short-term and long-term recovery goals.
- Provide you with some at-home exercises to help you continue your rehabilitation when you’re not in the clinic.
- Educate you on best practices, activities to avoid and what you can do to speed up your recovery.
- Answer any questions you might have, and ensure you have a clear recovery plan in place before you leave the clinic.
Don’t let a hand injury linger because you tried to work through the pain or hoped that it would resolve on its own. Physical therapy not only gets you back to full health, but research has shown that it contributes to a quicker recovery, so you can be back to daily activities sooner and without pain by taking the proactive step to choose PT. So whether you’re dealing with a slow-developing condition like carpal tunnel syndrome or you’ve suffered an acute injury to your hand or wrist, contact OrthoRehab Specialists if you’d like to help put your pain in the past. For more information contact our office today.