Dr. Paul Stillman (General Practitioner): In this video, we’ll find out what physiotherapy is and the role that it has to play in the treatment of many conditions. We’ll also talk about osteopathy and how the approach of both a physiotherapist and an osteopath differs from many healthcare professions. I’m Paul Stillman and this is Streaming Well.

Tim Allardyce (Physiotherapist): A physiotherapist is a healthcare practitioner who deals with restoring movement and function to the body. Physiotherapists work in a wide variety of settings, ranging from intensive care, to stroke rehabilitation, to care of the elderly, to pediatrics and neurological cases, as well.

What is an osteopath? An osteopath is a primary care practitioner who deals with the human body in a structural and functional way. We look at the body holistically. So, classically osteopaths will treat problems such as back pain, neck pain or whiplash, anything really which is involved with the bones and joints, we can treat.

What do physiotherapists and osteopaths treat? As osteopaths and physiotherapists, we mainly treat any musculoskeletal pain. Now what I mean by musculoskeletal is the muscles and the bones and the ligaments. If you like – the structure. So we see lower back pain, neck pains, elbow, wrist, knees, jaws, ankles. We’ll treat any part of the body which has a boney, tendon, muscular, ligament aspect to it.

Who should be treated by a physiotherapist? There is a certain category of people who are not suitable for treatment. We classify these people into categories of red flags. And these red flags are things where we take alert and go, hang on, this might be something more serious than just a boney problem, or a muscular problem, or a ligament problem. Such things as sometimes pain can travel down the arm from the shoulder with, say, heart problems. That’s not the sort of thing we want to see. If you start getting any severe numbness or weakness, or any change in your body’s normal function, such as loss of bowel or bladder control, this is not appropriate for physiotherapy.