What is a physical therapy evaluation?

It is a process that starts with a conversation about the history of your pain or injury. 

This conversation and process takes into account:

• your medical history, (something that could be causing the pain other than nerve, muscle, joint or connective tissues) 

• the history of the pain or injury you are seeking help with, what pattern it displays (what makes it better or worse)

• has this happened before

• any other injuries , surgeries or health conditions you had in the past that may be related

Next is an assessment of how you move. This leads into testing strength, range of motion, your nervous system and coordination. Some movements and positions in the assessment are called, “Special Tests” can help give insight into the source of pain.

From all this information, the physical therapist will come up with a list of potential sources of your pain, (muscle, tendon, ligament, joint, nerves, etc) and rank the likelihood of each one. 

Then they will form a hypothesis as to what is contributing to the source of your pain and form a “Physical Therapy Diagnosis”, (not a medical diagnosis). 

A Physical Therapy Diagnosis tries to explain what is contributing to your pain based on how you move, how flexible you are, how strong you are or a combination of several of these. 

Finally, “Plan of Care” is established. This is:

• what will be done (Therapeutic Exercise, Manual Therapy, Neuromuscular Reeducation, or other modalities) to improve your condition and work towards meeting your goals

• how often, (once a week twice a week, etc)  

• how long it is expected to take, (weeks, months, etc).

What comes next?

After the initial evaluation, the follow up visits may include some manual therapy, therapeutic exercise and home program instruction. 

Each session should work on addressing your goals and each session should build upon the last, (progression of how difficult the exercises are etc). 

Overtime, the amount of exercise should increase and the amount of manual therapy should decrease. 

Your home program should progress, working towards you becoming independent of your PT, (the goal being that you will graduate from physical therapy to your home program). 

Once your goals are met, you will have an understanding of what to do going forward to manage your condition and are discharged from physical therapy.