Sport in the country

Sport is very important to people living in the country. Every Saturday and occasionally on Sundays too the country towns verse each other in football, hockey and netball. Whilst on my country practical I saw many sports related injuties. Usually shoulder injuries for the footballers and knees and ankles for the hockey and netball players.

One of the patients that I saw weekly on my practical was madly into her netball. For the first two sessions I continued to treat her for her baker's cyst in her right knee. I used treatment techniques such as stretches, taping, VMO strengthening and SPRICEMMM post matches. Every week when she would return to physiotherapy the knee would be more swollen and sore because she had played 1-2 games of netball over the weekend. To get optimal recovery this patient would need to stop playing netball and loading the knee. My physiotherapist however explained to me that no matter what I said this patient wouldn't give up her netball until finals were over. This meant that I was aiming to avoid further injury rather than reducing her pain completely.

This happened on many occasions. I had a lady with a sprained ankle and another with navicular pain. Both of these patients also played netball whilst having these injuries. Treatment for these patients included ultrasound for the swelling and taping for the following game. This treatment frustrated me because it was difficult to see if my treatment was effective. I guess it did make me realise that sometimes you can't stop someone from playing sport especially at finals time so it is probably best to treat to avoid further injury and be realistic.