Just Press Play

Gone are the days of paperback novels, letter writing and printed bank deposit slips. We are in the digital age and access to everything is a smart phone or a click away. Whole industries have reinvented themselves online, creating immense benefits for their customers and their businesses. To its detriment, the physical therapy industry hasn’t kept up – in a most glaring example, we still hand out paper photocopies of home exercise programs. Physical therapists are set in their ways, at their own peril. 

Patients want to access their home exercise programs on the go; whether at the office, the gym, on a business trip or in their home… and they want to know they are performing their exercises correctly. It is time to replace the old-school stick figures in static postures printed on a piece of paper. Our digital future lies in video based home exercise programs. Recent advances in streaming technology allow physical therapists to deliver exercise videos anytime anywhere.

Video based home exercise programs can be beneficial to both the patient and the therapist. For the patient; videos can significantly improve performance, proficiency, motivation, and confidence.^1,2 The  visual and auditory cues from a video markedly improve performance and learning versus paper based descriptions.  When it is easy to view and learn, patients quickly develop confidence in their exercise performance. 

Video based home exercises can be extremely beneficial to the physical therapist as well. Decreased training time in the clinic (reviewing the basic exercise program only once or twice) along with reduced time spent on correcting poor technique during subsequent visits allows therapists to focus their treatment time on manual therapy and neuromuscular reeducation.  The combination of these factors is sure to significantly improve patient outcomes. 

The time has come to rethink our legacy paper-based practices and embrace what is possible – video technology is the new home exercise prescription solution.

Bronwyn Spira, PT, can be found at http://www.forcetherapeutics.com/, www.facebook.com/forcetherapeutics, or http://twitter.com/ForceTherEx.

1.  Reo JA, Mercer VS. Effects of live, videotaped, or written instruction on learning an upper-extremity exercise program. Phys Ther 2004; 84:622-33, http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/84/7/622.full

2.  Roddey et. al. Videotape instruction versus illustrations for influencing quality of performance, motivation, and confidence to perform simple and complex exercises in healthy subjects. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, Volume 18, Number 2, 1 June 2002 , pp. 65-73(9)    http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/apl/uptp/2002/00000018/00000002/art00004