The Integrated Sports Medicine and Rehabilitative Therapy Clinic will be back to taking more in-person patients with COVID-19 regulations relaxing.
According to Director of Therapy Services Jayme Baker, the clinic offers a variety of services focused on wellness, with musculoskeletal rehabilitation services, mindfulness techniques, pain prevention and even a clinician who specializes in headaches.
With this variety, many patients actually come in for reasons other than sports injuries.
“The majority of the patients we see have chronic pain of some kind,” Baker said.“They’ve had a shoulder injury for some time and the pain hasn’t gone away, or they have lower back pain for a period of time. Chronic injury is what we see the most of.”
Normally, the clinic will see up to several patients every hour, but last year the clinic saw a limited number of patients due to capacity.
“With our patients, clinicians and observation students that we allowed in, we could only have about 14 people in the clinic at one time,” Baker said. “That was a bit of a limiting factor.
Sanitization standards remained the same with COVID-19, cleaning procedures already in place as a healthcare facility. Every other table was blocked to distance patients.
In order to adapt to this limited capacity, the ISMaRT Clinic began using telehealth appointments to connect with patients virtually.
“It was not as popular because there are challenges with that,” Baker said. “If you can put your hands on somebody during an evaluation, a ligament or a movement, you get a lot more information than just having a conversation through a virtual setup.”
Even with these limitations, Baker still found telehealth beneficial. It allowed clinicians to check in with patients and see how they were doing with their assigned exercises and techniques.
“We used the service to help out with our continued care,” Baker said.
Baker believes it was beneficial for the university to keep the clinic open, even with telehealth limitations being difficult at points.
“I think it went really well,” Baker said. “Even during a pandemic, people have pain, injuries and are seeking care.”
This semester, while ISMaRT will not be seeing specific capacity limits, Baker plans to be mindful of how many patients they are bringing in.
The clinic plans to continue the use of telehealth services even as they begin opening back up to full capacity. Baker found it particularly helpful for contacting students while they travel. Students who live out of Moscow can also now access the ISMaRT services.
When dealing with patients who experience chronic pain, aiding them in their struggles can be rewarding.
“It’s actually pretty amazing. Someone who has had pain for months, sometimes years even, and they’re not sure what to do. Maybe they’ve gone to physical therapy in the past, but they haven’t been able to fully recover,” Baker said. “We use different techniques in the ISMaRT Clinic that we find are really beneficial for those patients.”
Baker notes the importance of mental wellbeing as well, another thing patients can struggle with when experiencing pain.
“A lot of the time, those things can make the difference for patients,” Baker said.
The clinic’s hours vary day to day, dependent on the clinicians staffed. Current hours can be found on their page. Telehealth appointments are offered by request.
ISMaRT services are free for students, $10 per visit for university staff and $15 per visit for the general community. Initial evaluations are free for all patients.
Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @haadiyatariq