We are finally reaching the end of a really up and down year! We thank you for your support – our clinics have never been busier, and I believe its due to both our great customers – who advocate to their family, their GPs and their friends about our service, and our great team of committed physios.

As COVID restrictions ease up, we hope that you enjoy getting back into exercising, sport and your normal activities – S L O W L Y ! We are seeing a massive uptick in people getting injured or having muscle strains, typically while just doing some of their usual activities! This has involved people – going back to work (rather than online), returning to class pilates, or even walking on the beach (that’s me!)

Remember that, for most people’s bodies, the last COVID lockdown has been something akin to a luxurious 6 month layoff – less exercise, less movement, more eating and relaxing during that period. For most people, this will take about 6-8 weeks to reverse, with our older patients taking potentially a bit longer.

Just a quick update regarding clinic hours – we will be shut from the 25th to the 28th and on the 1st December. All our physios will be taking breaks in turns with:

• Yuhui away 16^th December to 29^th December
• Derek away 24^th December to the 3^rd January
• Angela away 4^th January to 15^th January
• Manfred away 14^th January to 22^nd January
• Joshua and Adrian will be away for different periods in Feb, and April

Our clinic hours at CCMC:

24: till 4pm
25-28th – CLOSED
31: till 2pm
1st Jan – CLOSED

Our clinic hours at 1Health:

24 Dec: 9am-3pm
25-28 Dec: CLOSED
29-31 Dec 9am-3pm
1st Jan : CLOSED

Merry Christmas, and we look forward with hope , to a more steady, healthy 2022!

What is telehealth?

Telehealth is an option for having a virtual treatment session with one of our physios via your mobile or pc from home. It is particularly useful for people who are unable to leave their house, or are worried about having a face-to-face treatment session due to the current COVID-19 situation.

How does it work?

• Connect via phone/video with one of our physios at your scheduled appointment time.
• Our physios can
  • Assess your condition
  • Provide you with a diagnosis
  • Prescribe a rehabilitation and exercise program to help you manage your condition
  • Education on your injury and what activities to modify or avoid
  • Recommend self-treatment techniques

What conditions can a physio treat over telehealth?

One of our regular clients was seen with a recent flare up of her back pain since her work transitioned to full time working from home.  Over telehealth, our physiotherapist was able to discuss the potential causes of her back pain, check her work setup, advise her on self management strategies, and stretches. We also discussed that her new exercise routine and awkward yoga positions may have contributed to the onset of pain!

Telehealth can be an appropriate treatment for many musculoskeletal injuries, but it seems to best suited for rehabilitation, diagnosing and assessing injuries, vertigo treatment, and exercise advice.

Here is another patient working through her strengthening rehabilitation program and being guided along by one of our other physios.

Feel free to ask our physios about if this would be suitable for you!

COVID UPDATE – all the below may change in the coming days, with the recent Northern Suburbs outbreak which has been known about since 17th December. Will update you as things change – but current restrictions apply to people living in the Northern Suburbs area, and anyone considered symptomatic or have visited any of the listed venues by NSW health. Please refer to :

https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/latest-news-and-updates#latest-covid-19-case-locations-in-nsw

Just a quick update to let you know the clinic hours over the holiday season.

We will be shut from the 25th to the 28th and on the 1st December. Angela is taking a well earned rest from the 24th December, returning the 4th January.

Our clinic hours at CCMC:

24: till 3pm
25-28th – CLOSED
31: till 2pm
1st Jan – CLOSED

Our clinic hours at 1Health:

24 Dec: 9am-3pm
25-28 Dec: CLOSED
29-30 Dec 9am-5pm
31 Dec: 9am-4pm
1st Jan : CLOSED

We have a new staff member who you may see around the clinic – YuHui Lee recently graduated from the Univeristy of Sydney’s Masters program, and she should be a great addition to our team. You may have seen her around the clinic earlier in the year, when she spent a few weeks shadowing our team as a student.

Thanks for all the support through the year, and adjusting with us through all changes! I personally am looking forward to a mini break over Christmas, with a couple of mini NSW breaks with the family in January. All the best to you and your families during this time

Derek

A year of disruptions!

It feels a bit like a broken record saying how this has been “an unprecedented year” or “these unusual times”, but at the same time – it is an accurate description of what has happened this year and what everyone is going through. Overseas holidays have been replaced by trips to regional NSW (not even interstate!) , singing in church is banned, weddings have just the bridal party dancing only, and hand shakes and high fives have been replaced by fist and elbow bumps! Not to mention all the changes for workplaces, our home lives, going out, and the viability and cost of big office workspaces.

It’s taken a while to orientate to what world and life we are inhabiting. As a business, we are challenged to think through – What has changed, what remains the same, how can we continue to serve our customers /staff/ referrers in the best way possible?

We have been fortunate to be in NSW, and fortunate that our business has recovered well since April when things looked at their bleakest. Our clinic is as busy as we have ever been, and we are continuing to spend considerable time on our inhouse training and systems to best support our staff and provide the best service for our patients. We want to continue giving back to the profession by taking on University students.

A couple of other changes – we are shifting from November to private billing of EPC patients on a Saturday. Doing so will allow us as a clinic to balance out the patient load as evenly as possible, and to continue to provide enough options for patients whatever their situation may be.

As always, any feedback or questions can be directed to me at derek@tanhands.com.au

Staying and working from home (WFH) has become a regular part of our new existence.

Get the right balance:

1. The right gear/equipment
2. Set it up right – the right heights, distances, backrest position
3. Dont sit for too long – remember your body prefers some motion even if it breaks your concentration.

Work efficiently, and this will help you work longer and more effectively!

Let me know if you find these resources helpful

Having the opportunity to train students at the clinic is a time consuming but thoroughly rewarding process. It’s a way to give back to the profession, and a chance to give student physios a chance to see what life in private practice is about and to observe our  physios in their element – diagnosing, assessing and treating patients, and all that goes with that. It’s a chance to put their learnings from Uni to practice, to get their hands on, and to start working through the mysteries of the human body.

With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the enforcement of social distancing, our clinic and physios experienced a sudden but expected drop in patients. This extra available time presented a unique opportunity to take on a student – we haven’t had one for 3 years now – and to be able to devote some time into training that next generation.

Yuhui is a final year student in the GEM Physio programme at Sydney Uni. She spent a few weeks at our clinic in April drilling our physios with many many questions, and found many ways to assist the clinic – helping with admin, and translating for our non-Chinese speaking physios – you’ll also see her pop up in some of the exercise videos which we’ve started doing! She was kind enough to share her reflections. 

How did you enjoy your time at the clinic?
The past few weeks at the clinic was definitely a paradigm shift for me and shed new light on my perspective of musculoskeletal physiotherapy apart from what the university has taught. I’ve had many opportunities to participate in in-service sessions and learn directly from the experienced physios. They were very passionate about what they were doing and were willing to share their wealth of knowledge with me and answer my questions even if that means taking time from their breaks to practice with me and teach me some new techniques! I enjoyed being able to interact with the patients as well and getting hands-on experience– it was truly rewarding. 

Most memorable experience/patient?

I remember one of Manfred’s patient complaining of neck pain did not seem to improve upon usual corrections in the ribs pelvis, or foot. I could tell he had cudgelled his brain to find the root problem, but he continued hunting. The situation was getting a little bit tense. Then towards the end of the session when Manfred corrected her elbow, she could rotate her head to the right (with an obvious increase in range of motion), and her whole face lit up and she exclaimed “AH! SO MUCH BETTER!”. That moment I was finally relieved but also bewildered at this sorcery..Who could’ve thought the neck pain came from her elbows?!

What are two things you learnt?

1.) The idea that the whole body is connected resonates profoundly with me after shadowing at the clinic. Rather than treating the body segment or region where the pain is arising from. it is important to consider the body as a whole and identify the primary driver to get a complete picture of the problem to most effectively treat the patient. As such, neck pain might stem from a pelvis problem or even a foot problem-which at times can be mind-boggling! 

2.) Palpation is a really useful that takes lots of practice and experience! It can provide so much information about the patient’s body and requires a lot of concentration and sensitivity at the finger tips (sometime you even have to close your eyes to concentrate on feeling!). Often times it doesn’t necessarily mean pushing hard to locate the structure but “sinking” in beneath the structure to search for the problematic area and you would pick up more information by palpating lightly. 

Anything that really surprised you? 

The thoracic ring approached seemed like a myth in the beginning, but eventually the physios were able to unravel this concept and help me understand how to use it effectively to treat patients. 

The accuracy of the physios in detecting minor deviations in body structures and treating it and making the patient feel much better after the session-especially when the patient responded with “Thats exactly where it is!” As well as Derek being able to precisely extrapolate what the patient did to injure themselves simply through palpating body structures and analysing their movements. 

Haha Thanks Yuhui! First time I’ve ever been called that!

Well, we hope that we can share some more stories from our clinic and once again, thank you to all our patients that participated in letting Yuhui get some hands on experience.

Early this year, when news reports started coming back about the new virus that was affecting people in China, I, like most people didn’t foresee what would unfold this year.

As the virus spread, and the news continued to confirm the number of cases and what was happening in other places around the world – Italy, Spain, the cruise ships, the pictures of the overwhelmed hospital systems, the worn out frontline workers – it took a while to realise what that would mean for Australia and for life here.

The shutdowns came thick and fast, as did the press conferences – 1 day the PM was still going to the NRL, the next day it felt like all sports (and the world) suddenly stopped. Life suddenly become about – quarrantines, grounded flights, social isolation, working from home, empty public transport, mortgage repayment holidays, quiet traffic and closed cafes and shops.

These changes to our lives have been difficult for most people – with the bad, it has also brought time to reflect, and to consider life, and to evaluate how things are travelling. A difficult decision was made at the end of April to let Cliff go.

Cliff has been a steady hand in our practice for the past 7 years and has been an integral part of the growth of the clinic – in both size and maturity – as he has helped oversee our clinic, and worked to train and develop the other staff. We want to wish him and his young family the best of luck in all his future endeavours, and a sincere thanks from all the patients and staff that he’s worked with over the years.

Change is difficult, and its especially hard in this current environment where so many changes have been thrust open us, and we are left to try to plan around that, and work out how to keep moving forwards. But overall, I can’t help but feel blessed to be living in Australia. Let me offer up a prayer for this broken world we live in, for safety through the next stages of our unwinding, to put our trust in our governments, and for those governments to lead with wisdom and care. Most of all we offer up our prayers to our creator who is loving and watching and knows all that is happening here on Earth.

Stay Safe

Are you doing enough physical activity during the COVID19 pandemic?

Posted by Josh Wong

Over the past few years step counters like the Fitbit have become increasingly popular, and with that, a magic number of 10,000 steps became a widely accepted recommended amount per day. Although this number probably isn’t very significant, it is mainly an encouragement to increase physical activity in a generation that sees more sedentary office workers, teens who spend most of their free time playing video games, and even shopping is gradually shifting online. I recently spoke to a friend who told me that working from home has led her to have an average step count of 100/day. Although I don’t track my steps, I would guess my number is similar to this, which equates to 1% of that magic number of recommended steps per day. Let that sink in. During this unprecedented time where we are encouraged to stay home as much as possible, many of us may only be getting 1% of our recommended amount of physical activity!

So, what should we do?

The obvious and simple answer is to do more physical activity. The harder question to answer is how do we do this. The government has continued to allow exercise as a reason to leave home, and many have started to or continued doing daily walks/runs, which is great. But for some of us who lack motivation or perhaps have never been much of a runner, I usually give a few tips to my patients:
1) Start out easy – if you’re new to an exercise (especially if you’re new to exercise in general), start off by doing something easy. If you’ve never jogged in your life, perhaps we can start with doing some speed-walking. We can always progress to jogging once our body is comfortable with doing more exercise. We can also avoid injuries or over-taxing our bodies this way.
2) Set a (realistic) schedule. “I will walk 30 minutes every evening after work” or “I will run for 20 minutes, 4 times per week.” Just like many other things, if we don’t schedule exercise in, we are likely to never do it. Put it in a calendar if you need to, and stick to the schedule as much as you can!
3) Find something you enjoy doing. Running is not for everyone (I know it’s not for me), but there is certainly something you may find more enjoyable for exercise, or at least more tolerable. Whether its cycling, or doing a pilates workout on Youtube, or a resistance workout with weights and bands, the goal is to do exercise and it can come in many forms. The likelihood of sticking to an exercise regime increases the more you enjoy it.

Leave a comment letting us know what you’re doing for exercise during this time! And also feel free to leave any questions for us to guide you through your exercises! Get in touch via email – reception@tanhands.com.au

It has been quite an experience operating our physiotherapy practice through these unprecedented times. Like yourself, our team are making our best efforts to adjust and make sound, rational decisions in this rapidly evolving situation.

Our first priority remains in maintaining our high level of service so as to be able to serve our community amidst these tough times. It has been challenging as we have to balance being remain open for business to support and serve our local community and also to keep our clients in our community safe.

Through these changing times, we are committed to follow medical advice from the Australian Government closely to keep our staff, customers and workplace safe. We have implemented more hygiene measures in our clinics, and the plan is to keep our business open and running for as long as possible to minimize disruptions to our services.

Being sensitive to our client’s need also means that we need to be flexible in adopting changes to our model of service. As a result, we are now offering home visits for clients that are apprehensive about going out and into our practices. We can also offer teleconference consultations too for clients that would not require the hands on treatment but would benefit from exercise prescription and customized advice on how to manage their condition.

Our business has never been faced with such challenging times, but our commitment to serving the community has never been stronger, and we thank you all for your ongoing support to our business over the past 10 years.

COVID-19 Updated 23/04/2020

Are we still open?

Yes! Both our clinics are still open. However you might notice our available hours being different from usual. This may be subject to further change.

On 23 March 2020 the Federal Minister for Health, The Hon Greg Hunt: The Australian Minister for Health confirmed that ALL allied health businesses can continue working and are encouraged to do so. (https://australian.physio/apa-advocacy-during-covid-19)         

Is it still safe to come in for physio? Yes!

We are implementing some extra precautions to reduce the risk to our staff and patients, making it as safe as possible. These will stay as part of our normal procedures until the Coronavirus threat abates.

1. All of our physios have been required to participate in a COVID-19 Infection Control Training module organized by the Department of Health and Aspen Medical.
2. Stricter hand hygiene policies at work to reduce spread of the virus.
3. Regular wiping down of hard surfaces to reduce contamination
4. Any patients or staff showing any signs of cough or fever are required to stay at home.
5. Masks are available for staff or patients to wear
6. Patients can choose to wait outside the medical centre after arriving for their appointment (if they choose) and be called in when the physio is ready.

We request that if you are experiencing any symptoms related to COVID-19 to please stay at home and reschedule your appointment. If necessary, contact your local GP.

It is very important at this stage that we take all precautions to slow and stop the spread of the coronavirus.

If you are unsure or have any concerns, you can always contact us!

What else is happening?

We are also looking at other options to provide essential physiotherapy services for those who need treatment during these difficult times. Home visits and telehealth options are available. We are almost ready to start rolling out a series of educational resources such as:
– Videos on home based exercise
– A guide on how to setup your work environment
– Tips on how to maintain your sanity during social distancing.

Watch this space for more details and updates.

For more info on COVID-19, here are some links:https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alerthttps://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/alerts/Pages/coronavirus-faqs.aspxhttps://preview.nsw.gov.au/covid-19