What is Physiotherapy?
Physiotherapy helps restore movement and function when someone is affected by injury, illness, or disability.
Physiotherapists help people affected by injury, illness or disability through movement and exercise, manual therapy, education, and advice. They help to maintain health for people of all ages, helping patients to manage pain and prevent disease.
Physiotherapists facilitate recovery, enabling people to stay in work and helping them remain independent for as long as possible.
Physiotherapy is a science-based profession and takes a ‘whole person’ approach to health and wellbeing, which includes the patient’s general lifestyle and impact on mental health.
At the core is the patient’s involvement in their own care, through education, awareness, empowerment, and participation in their treatment.
Why physiotherapy?
Physiotherapy is a degree-based healthcare profession. Physios use their knowledge and skills to improve a range of conditions in neuro-musculoskeletal health, such as back pain, arthritis, and sports injuries.
What we do
The physiotherapy MSK outpatient team is made up of qualified physiotherapists, rehab assistants and administration staff.
We provide the local physiotherapy service for people with musculoskeletal, rheumatology or persistent pain problems. We help our patients to maximise their quality of life and support them to achieve their functional goals including maintaining employment and return to an active lifestyle.
As autonomous practitioners, physiotherapists will complete a comprehensive assessment, formulate a care plan in conjunction with the patient and offer treatment and advice. We can also refer patients on to some other services if further intervention is required.
Occasionally students may see patients under the supervision of a qualified physiotherapist, in which case you will be asked for your consent, please tell us if this is not acceptable to you.
To get the most out of your treatment your physiotherapist will discuss your therapy goals with you, patients who achieve the most success work with their physiotherapist to embed the advice and exercise programme into their home routine as well as working towards any suggested lifestyle changes.
What will my appointment involve?
You may be offered a telephone appointment or a face to face appointment in the department.
Telephone appointment
A physiotherapist will telephone you within a pre-arranged period of time. The length of the call may vary but on average will last 20 minutes. You will be asked questions about your condition and how it affects you. An appropriate treatment plan will be discussed with you which may involve providing you with some advice and exercises. If required a further telephone appointment will be arranged or you may be asked to attend an appointment in the department.
Face to face appointment
One of our physiotherapy team will carry out a 30-40 minute assessment to identify your problems and work with you to agree a treatment plan with you. Any follow up appointments usually last 20-30 minutes.
Please arrive at your appointment on time, this allows you to book yourself in at the reception desk. If you arrive more than 10 minutes after your appointment time your physiotherapist may not be able to see you.
For safety reasons please tell the receptionist and physiotherapist if you have a pacemaker or if you may be pregnant.
The physiotherapist may ask you to undress to your underwear as part of your assessment. For a neck or shoulder problem you may feel more comfortable wearing a vest, for a lower back or leg problem you may wish to bring shorts.
Additional Support
Please notify staff at the time of booking your appointment if you require any additional support, including a chaperone or interpreter as we are unable to allow family members to do this.
Medication
Please complete all of the paperwork that is sent to you through the post making sure that you list all of your medication.
Parking
There is a charge for parking at the hospitals and at some of our other treatment sites.
Who to contact
MSK Physiotherapy Admin Office
If you need to make or cancel an appointment, please phone the MSK Physiotherapy Admin Office on:
Phone line: 01484 905380
(Lines are open Monday to Friday 8.00am – 4.30pm)
Appointments can be offered from 7:00am to 6:30pm at some sites, please enquire when booking your appointment.
If you cannot attend your appointment, please give 24 hours' notice by calling the number above.
Calderdale Royal Hospital Physiotherapy Department
Tel: 01422 224198
Huddersfield Royal Infirmary Physiotherapy Department
Tel: 01484 342434
Patient feedback:
Your feedback is important to us. If you would like to speak to us, please contact us on the email address below (please do not use this email address for appointment changes/queries).
Due to technical difficulties, we are unable to receive emails to the above email address if they are being sent from a Yahoo email account.
Cancelling an Appointment
It is important for you to keep your appointment but sometimes it is not possible. If you need to re-arrange or cancel your appointment contact the MSK Physiotherapy Admin Office 01484 905380 giving 24 hours notice. Due to high demand on our services, if you fail to attend your appointment and have not contacted us you may be discharged in line with the Trust access policy.
Physiotherapy Department
Our physiotherapy services are based at both main hospitals and various health centres - You can see where our departments are based on the map below. This is so you can receive care closer to home or where you work.
When booking your appointment please let us know where you would like to be seen and whether you require any additional assistance e.g. language interpreter, sign language interpreter.
All our physiotherapy departments have individual treatment cubicles where we assess and treat patients. In addition, we have gyms at the larger sites where we run a number of supervised exercise sessions.
