Fiona McMahon PT, DPT
One of the requirements for maintaining your license as a physical therapist, is to take continuing education classes. The amount of classes you are required to take will vary from state to state. Many physical therapists take the option to do the bare minimum required to maintain their license. This is not the case with the PTs at Beyond Basics Physical Therapy, whom also do a ton of in house training, in-services, case studies, and journal clubs in addition to formal classes. Many of our physical therapists exhaust their continuing education days and continuing education budget and chose to attend continuing ed on their own time and dollar, because they love it so much. Even though, they are well beyond satisfying their requirements for licensure. It is something that makes the physical therapists at Beyond Basics really special and in the top of their field.
As practicing pelvic floor physical therapists, we have extensive experience, but the truth of the matter is we can always know more. For many of us, before we arrived at Beyond Basics, we learned to treat pelvic pain on individuals with male anatomy by avoiding the penis all together. To be honest, we can get a lot of patient’s better by treating the muscles of the pelvic floor internally, but as a group, we were eager to be able to learn and treat issues of the penis directly. We just wanted to be able to get patients with issues like Peyronie’s disease (a bend in the penis, due to dysfunction in the fascia), erectile dysfunction and incomplete bladder emptying better on a much quicker time scale.
We were lucky to have Sara Sauder, PT, DPT and Kelli Wilson, PT, DPT, FAAOPPT, OCS come up to visit us in NYC one cold Saturday in January to help us expand our physical therapy tool boxes for individuals suffering from the following conditions, amongst others:
- Erectile Dysfunction
- Post Vasectomy Pain Syndrome
- Prostatitis
- Urinary Pain
- Urinary incontinence
- Pain following Hernia Surgery
- Circumcision Scarring
In the class we covered a broad range of factors influencing the health and function of male reproductive anatomy, including the interplay of hormones, scar tissue from old surgery, restrictions in the fascia of the penis or scrotum, and hernia. We learned hands on techniques to improve the movement of tissues around and blood flow to the penis and scrotum.
Speaking for all of us, I would say, that Sara and Kelli helped us to better treat our male patients. It is clear as physical therapists, we continue to grow and learn long after physical therapy school. We at Beyond Basics Physical Therapy hold our continuing education close to our hearts and truly believe it is what sets us apart from other physical therapy clinics.
If you are interested in learning more about what we can do for pelvic floor conditions of the male anatomy, check out our other articles here!
Prostatitis What it is and What to do About it
Also for more information on how manual physical therapy can help pain conditions of the male anatomy, check out this article:
Anderson R, Wise D, Sawyer T, et al. Integration of myofascial trigger point release and paradoxical relaxation training treatment of chronic pelvic pain in men. J Urol. 2005; 174(1): 155-60
You can read the full abstract here
