PHYSIO OPINION: Being realistic about injury rehab timeframes

Patience and persistence are the keys to a successful physiotherapy rehabilitation program for your injury or following orthopaedic surgery. At Acland Street Physiotherapy, we try our best to set very realistic expectations of full recovery from the beginning of the physiotherapy treatment program. We have a relatively low patient drop out out rate to injury rehab programs that need to be committed to for at least 3 months. We enlighten and train our patients from the beginning of the physiotherapy treatment program that  their movement or function will improve much before pain does. Realistically, pain will most probably come on for the journey but will reduce over time. Nonetheless, in some cases, pain may resolve with a rapid increase in function.

It is important to understand that for some people depending on the nature of the injury, the pain will resolve completely. For most people, pain will continue on at a relatively manageable level. They will experience a little bit of a niggle or discomfort now and then and this might be the "new normal" moving forward. 

The key point here is that be reassured with a comprehensive injury rehabilitation program, you will with time, be able to return to doing the things you love, and your pain will be relatively less in all cases. In addition, completely resting and avoiding activities is often not the answer and can lead to poorer results in the longer term.