Physical therapy is just for curing injuries, right? Wrong!

There is always a much wider scope for every discipline of the medical sciences than what appears at a surficial level.

Most people associate physical therapy as a therapeutic tool, meant to cure backaches, injuries, and chronic pains. In reality, many people use it to gain the ability to deal with their day-to-day routine, as well.

You can find physical therapy centers all across America. Maryland based physical therapy centers in particular have much credibility over recent years.

If your daily occupation is taking a toll on your body, you should undergo a functional capacity evaluation (FCE)

Scope

In the context of the nature of your job, your body can take only a certain volume of physical load at a given point in time. FCE aims at determining that level, and increasing it with the help of specifically designed physical exercises.

In addition, FCE is also intricately linked with medical insurances, orthopedics, council therapy, etc.

It includes musculoskeletal screening, strength tests, cardiovascular examination, tolerance test, etc.

Significance

If you took the evaluation with the sole intention of making your body more able of handling work related physical stress, that the concerned therapist would help you in one of two ways. They are:

Work Conditioning

This mode of therapy is often used for people that need attention for a particular body part. This may be due to injury or prolonged physical distress. The duration and intensity of the training increase, simultaneously with the level of the subject. Still, the course remains oriented around the nature of the subject’s job requirement.

Work Hardening

This, in the simplest of words, is the next level of conditioning. It is always a goal-oriented program. When strength, endurance, and sometimes flexibility are increased, it simultaneously increases functionality. In turn, if the patient is suffering from bodily pains, they decrease. The program is typically designed for people with a nine to five job, but may also be manipulated to the specific number of hours of work they are putting in, each week. Therapists also take the environment of your work into consideration. For example, both firefighters, and mail carriers have very labor-intensive jobs, but the nature remains quite different, and it is important to consider the environment, here.