Everyone needs a little bit of help at times and one of the best ways to assist your senior with physical challenges is for her to work with a physical therapist. Physical therapy providers assess your senior’s ability to move her body and work with her to help her to move her body more effectively. Over time, the skills your senior develops can improve her self-confidence and her independence.
Physical Therapy Protects Quality of Life
The main goal when caring for someone you love is ensuring that their quality of life is as high as possible. For your senior, that means understanding her health issues and accommodating her needs as much as you can. Working with a physical therapist can help you and your senior to understand what she needs to do in order to be able to maintain mobility and continue to live her life on her own terms.
Provides Options for Pain Management
Chronic pain affects every area of your elderly family member’s life and can keep her from being as active as she needs or wants to be. Physical therapy can show your senior how to move her body in a way that helps to reduce her pain levels. Sticking with the exercises and stretches that she learns can help your elderly family member greatly reduce her pain overall.
Meets Wellness Goals
Your senior has wellness goals that she wants to meet, but that doesn’t mean she knows how she’s going to do so. Working with a physical therapist helps her to learn which of her goals are realistic and how to modify them if they aren’t going to work for her. She can get the help that she needs to put a plan in place so that she can work toward meeting the goals she’s put in place for herself.
Speeds Up Recovery
If your elderly family member is in need of physical therapy because of an injury or illness, her primary goal is likely to heal as quickly as she can. When physical therapy aides come to her and assist her in her own environment, that means she doesn’t have to expend energy in ways that aren’t going toward recovery. Depending on the types of healing she needs to do, your senior’s physical therapist can help her to build muscle strength or learn to move in new ways that support her needs.
Maintains Comfort and Privacy
It’s often a lot easier for someone who needs help becoming stronger to do so in an environment where they feel comfortable and secure. For your senior, that may mean that having physical therapy providers come to her home ensures that she sticks with her therapy plan. Remaining consistent helps her to see results.
Maintaining as much independence as your senior can gives her the tools that she needs to be able to age in place, remain mobile and enjoy this stage of her life as much as possible. Working with a physical therapist bridges gaps that might keep her from achieving those goals.
