Neck Pain

The first step is always a thorough examination. 

Subjective examination: this is getting all the relevant information about your pain, how it behaves, what sets it off and what helps. There are lots of clues to help with diagnosis from this information.

It also means finding more about YOU ie what you do in your life, what kind of activities you normally do, and what you can’t do at the moment. This is the stuff you care about!

Red flags: these are indications of a problem that might be more serious and need further investigation by your doctor. While these conditions are relatively rare, they do happen. We have seen our fair share of ‘red flag’ conditions as first contact practitioners.

Objective examination: this is where we zero in on your restrictions to movement that your neck pain and neck muscles are creating. 

We perform further examination with the cervical spine and upper back that gives us information beyond what a simple movement examination will provide. 

Using the principles of the McKenzie Method, we look at how your pain or movement changes with repetition, which helps to build up a more comprehensive picture of the behaviour of the problem.

Neurological testing: if pain extends into either arm, we check your nerve function by testing strength, feeling and reflexes in the arm.

Naturally, you need to know what is wrong. 

We aim to make it easy to understand the nature of the problem and why it hurts.

Pulling together all of the information from the assessment, we provide you with a provisional diagnosis for your problem on day one. 

This is further refined over time as we see how you respond to treatment.

This step is really important: you need to go from assessment into treatment with a clear plan and an expected timeframe.

This management plan is developed together between you and the physio. 

We make sure that it aligns with your needs and expectations.

With an acute neck pain problem, the initial goal will be helping reduce the acute pain and limitations. 

This will be followed by helping the patient to stay painfree and moving freely, and then returning to activities, work or sports. 

With a longstanding neck pain problem, the approach will be more nuanced depending on the presentation, but the aims will be the same. 

As with all persistent pain problems, education is key with a longstanding neck pain problem. 

We help the patient to have realistic beliefs about their problem and their pain .. and it usually involves increasing their expectations rather than limiting them!

Our physiotherapy treatment of neck pain is going to depend on the individual, but it might consist of:

• hands on treatment: manual therapy like joint mobilisation
• soft tissue massage and other techniques
• stretching
• education: about neck health, anatomy, pain, ergonomics and posture
• advice about the value of general exercise and how it can help with persistent pain problems
• specific exercises for the neck

We are all trained in the McKenzie Method for spinal problems (and upper and lower limb problems). This is a physiotherapy treatment approach which is a combination of pain-relieving exercise, education and hands-on treatment.

A full recovery involves not just becoming painfree, but also a return to activities that you have been prevented from doing, or you have been wary of doing.

We aim to introduce this step as early as possible whenever possible. 

In fact, self management can often be introduced as early as the first consultation. 

It can be any of the following: advice with ongoing self-treatment, exercise specific to the problem and more general exercise. 

It often involves home exercise programs.

Maximising self-management is critical to reducing the need for ongoing treatment. 

Our aim is not to create therapist-reliance, where you have to return for treatment indefinitely to ‘stay well’.

Instead, it is to help people to get to a stage where they can look after themselves and take control of their health