A guide to adjusting your patient's activity, around their foot and ankle pain

A lot of my second opinion cases are people being told they can’t do a lot of physical activity, or being thrown back into exercising and movement with limited support and their pain returning.

The key in rehab is people remain as active as possible to reduce deconditioning, without activity still being an aggravator and delaying recovery.

This can be a difficult balance to strike as it involves figuring out what is the right amount of activity and supports to provide the patient and as well as coaching them on how and why to modify their activity.

So I’ve created this scale breaking down different activity modification strategies into stages, key questions you can ask yourself about whether your patient fits into each stage and how I consider whether each stage is appropriate for a patient.

The most important part is working with your patient to figure out what will work best for them and their training.

It’s very common for some patients to continue to push into pain and delay recovery.

Or others to under-load for fear of re-aggravating their injury.

It’s our role to not only know the options available, but coach them through the change and how to increase over time.