October 1, 2020
Healing and Health through Physical Therapy
Physical therapy (PT) is hands-on, collaborative care between a patient and a practitioner that aims to ease pain and help a person function, move, and live better. It can both prevent and heal chronic or acute injury. At St. Vincent, PT is an essential clinic and offers traditional therapies along with some new innovations for pain management, injury prevention and general physical conditioning and fitness.It’s helpful to know about two notable changes in PT delivery in the recent past. In 2015, Colorado became what is known as a direct access state, which means that obtaining a referral from a physician or other healthcare provider for PT isn’t required to receive care. Second, as of 2015 a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree is a qualifying degree, and it includes training in all areas of musculoskeletal treatments and doctoral-level research.
St. Vincent Health’s Doctors of Physical Therapy, David Cimino – PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS, and Kelly Bergkessel- PT, DPT, COMT, and Walter Hafner – PT, DPT, are dedicated healers who advance their skills with equal parts science and art. Their culture of caring is evident in new offerings from the St. Vincent PT clinic:
- This year, David and Kelly created online video fitness and conditioning classes to address exercise in the COVID-19 environment—which for many, necessitated at-home and individual fitness regimens. They’re expanding this offering with a Winter Conditioning series, available again by streaming video, in early October.
- For runners (and would-be runners), their new running analysis may be of interest. Video footage of a runner on a treadmill is slowed down so that Kelly and David can observe gait, stride, body mechanics and muscle activity. Then, they provide substantive pointers to improve performance and minimize injury.
- Dry Needling is a new treatment option at St. Vincent that utilizes thin filiform needles to penetrate the skin and stimulate underlying trigger points, muscle, and connective tissues for the management of pain, muscle tension, and movement impairments. It’s used to treat everything form low back pain to headaches, muscle strains to sciatica.
At St. Vincent, PT services are offered seven days a week to for maximum convenience, as our DPTs help empower patients to take individual control of their health. Learn more about all the option for PT at 719-486-7180 or svghd.org/physical-therapy/.
