Your First Paeds Physio Appointment

We know that sometimes medical appointments can be a scary thing for your littlies so we’ve decided to break it down for your families to help with the process!

Paediatric Physiotherapist appointments will normally be structured around play based therapy to help your littlies achieve their goals in a fun way.

When you arrive at the practice, you’ll let the admin staff know you are here and the physiotherapist will call you in for your appointment.

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Assessment – Observation & Subjective

This will include:

• We will likely discuss your child’s medical history and their development.
• Often the physiotherapist will just observe your child through most of the appointment to see how they move, play, stand and walk
• Our main goal of the first session will be to get a good history and start to bond with your child to form a positive therapy relationship!
• Sometimes we will use a structured assessment tool in the first appointment.

Goals!

• We will work together to set goals that are appropriate for you and your child.
• Your goals could be to achieve anything!
• This may look like:
  • To be able to walk upstairs holding onto a rail independently
  • To be able to roll over both ways or pull up to standing on furniture
  • To improve balance to allow for participation in all ability’s soccer, netball or basketball etc.
  • To improve jumping or running to play with friends at school.
• When setting goals, we want to make sure they are realistic and achievable but specific to you are your family’s needs!

Treatment Session

• Following your first session we will come up with a plan for ongoing treatment sessions that are specific to your child’s age, interests and goals
• Acitivities may include, crawling, climbing, jumping, running.
• Most of the time we will set up an obstacle course and some different games to target your littlies specific goals.

Home Exercises

• During the sessions we will encourage activities at home to help achieve goals
• These may include changes to the daily routine such as with dressing, games or exercises.
• One of the most effective tools for home exercises is family involvement so we will try to make these achievable to fit into your routine at home.

Some Extra Bits to Remember..

Your first appointment will be around 60 minutes to make sure we assess, treat and plan effectively. Please come with any questions you may have about the process. We can also alter treatment and activities to match your child’s needs. Whether that is sessions based in the clinic, at school, home, pool or at the park to best fit your child’s needs!

We look forward to seeing you and helping your children achieve their goals!