It's standard practice for physiotherapists to give out exercise and advice sheets to patients, but is there any benefit to them?
As any physiotherapist knows, the reality of their practice is that most of the time you have too little time with your patients. There is so much you would like to do with a patient, so much that they need to know, but so little time.
As a result, you give them exercise and advice sheets, and hope they will read them. And while they aren't guaranteed to read the exercise and advice sheets you give them, it's likely that the information is valuable.
Why? Because as anyone who works in rehab, fitness or nutrition knows, the average patient knows very little about what it takes to look after their body. Therefore any information you can give them that increases their knowledge has a potential benefit.
Effective rehabilitation is a combination of doing the right things, avoiding others, and getting good nutrition. If the information you hand out to patients helps them improve in any of those areas, it will support the direct work that you do with them in your rehab sessions - and that has to be a good thing!
