Pain Awareness Month: an interview with Brad Zwart, DPT

September is Pain Awareness Month.
Brad Zwart, who manages our Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy departments, answers some question about how we can help you with chronic or acute pain

Q: As part of Orange City Area Health System’s comprehensive ability to address pain, how do the Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy departments’ services fit in with these efforts to help with chronic and acute pain?

A: In the Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Therapy department, we see patients with all types of acute and chronic pain. Frequently we work in collaboration with family medicine providers, and the pain management clinic and sports medicine clinic physicians in terms of medical management and injections. We also see patients from our orthopedic doctors, or even patients coming to us without referral.

We are intent on listening to everyone's story of what brought them to us so that we can understand the nuances of what is driving their pain experience. Typically it's a high biological and tissue type cause, but sometimes it can be influenced by the patient’s perception of what's going on, the historical context of who they've talked to about this type of a problem before, past pain experiences, stressors that are influencing their life in general, nutritional status, and overall health. These are addressed in a team approach in our department and within the health system.

We work diligently to help patients understand the complexities of pain and how it influences them, but also give them hope to return to being able to help themselves and get back to doing the things they love. In addition to the therapeutic interventions by the skilled therapist in our PT center/gym, we give patients important tools they can use themselves – such as energy conservation, exercises to perform regularly at home, ways to modify the physical stress load to an injured tissue, and working to improve nutrition.

Physical therapists and occupational therapists can employ a variety of strategies to help patients. Beyond helping them understand their pain, we can help them using trigger point dry needling, manual therapy, bracing, assistive devices, electrical simulation, aquatic therapy, postural, graded exposure, exercise, and energy conservation.

Q: What are some of the conditions that patients might see you to get help?

A: We see patients with all types of conditions … from those related to musculoskeletal type issues typically brought on by an injury or movement, to those from disease processes influencing the neuromuscular skeletal system. These can range from headaches, to neck pain and its influence on headaches and migraines, to back pain. We also address pelvic floor muscle pain, knee pain, toe pain, shoulder pain … and everything in between.

Q: How do patients experiencing pain access your services?

A: It’s easy to access our services by calling our clinic directly at 737-5234. That’s a good first step to help direct you to the services you need, including possible medical evaluation and treatment. You could also talk with your physician, nurse practitioner or physician's assistant and they can refer you to us. We offer services at the Main Campus clinic and at the Aspire Therapy and Wellness Clinic in downtown Orange City. There are several differences in the services and accessibility at each, so feel free to ask questions and we will try to get you to the facility that best meets your needs.