Geriatric Physiotherapy is one of the complex and most required services in our community. Providing physiotherapy to older people is a challenge

“Working with older people can present the physiotherapist with a set of challenges unparalleled in other areas of practice. The caseload is very mixed; clients with musculoskeletal, neurological, and cardiovascular problems may all be found in a single caseload and often within the same client. The unique pattern of aging in each individual and the varying responses that older people may demonstrate and the complexity of the challenge is obvious.”

Goals may be to improve the elderly person’s function or to maintain the current function and prevent further decline. In order to plan right goals, physiotherapist working with senile adults have to identify rehabilitation potential by deciding the appropriate features related to their physical deconditioning, underlying pathology or aging and, accordingly, which are reversible and manageable. To this end, the therapist must have knowledge of what is an acceptable ‘norm’.

At times, there may be a conflict between the person’s goals and the therapist’s idea of what might be safe. The physiotherapist’s task is then to highlight the risks and try and minimize them where possible rather than stopping a person functioning altogether.

The Fundamental Principles of Physiotherapy for Older people

• Disability is generally regarded as being due to a pathological process, or injury, not prima facie ‘old age’.

• The effects of biological aging reduce the efficiency of the body’s systems, but throughout life, the optimum function is maintained in each individual by continuing to use these systems to their maximum capacity.

• Physiotherapists have a key role in enabling older people to use a number of the body’s systems fully to enhance mobility and independence.

• When neither improvement nor even maintenance of functional ability is a reasonable goal, physiotherapists contribute to helping senile people to have a comfortable and pain-free living.

• Prevention of health problems in later life through lifestyle modification and enhancement.

• Adding not only years to life but also quality in the living.