What are the typical goals of physical therapy after a spinal cord injury?

I usually have four areas for my goals. The first goal is in relation to bed mobility-how do you move around in bed?-and that goal might be for you to be independent in moving your body in bed, or independent in teaching someone else how to move your body for you. Then I look at transfers-how are you getting from the bed to a wheelchair, or getting up to standing and the goal would be for you to be as independent as possible in transfers from one surface to another, and then I would qualify whether I expected you to be able to something as extreme as getting up off the floor, or into a tall vehicle. The third area would be in moving around in space, so either typically a walking goal if that's appropriate for someone with an incomplete spinal cord injury, and/or a wheelchair goal-so how are you going to independently move your wheelchair and on what sort of surfaces might we expect you to be on. And again as much independence as possible is the desirable outcome. And then my fourth goal is always related to exercise, and weight management and being able to take care of your body. So the goal is generally fairly generic of being independent and a stretching and strengthening program.

Psychical therapy goals for someone who has a spinal cord injury really vary on the level of the injury. Injuries are technically classified as paraplegia or quadriplegia which you also sometimes hear described as tetraplegia. So someone who has the tetrapoligic or quadriplegic injury, that means that there is some weakness or profound weakness in the arms and in the legs. For someone who has paraplegia there is weakness in the legs. For people who have quadriplegia what we can do is we can teach people to use their hands in some cases to work on those basic skills like getting dressed, feeing themselves and that’s where we assist our occupational therapy counterparts.  We work together in teams in order to make someone functioanl as independent as possible.  If someone has a paraplegic injury where they have full use of their hands and their arms, again depending on the level of the injury, sometimes we can teach those people how to walk again. Sometimes they’re going to be primarily wheelchair users, and in those cases we’ll teach them how to be as independent as possible in the wheelchair, including being able to navigate the world, which is not a level-flat surface like you’ll see in the hospital.  But it can be a very bumpy road so being able to perform skills like wheelies, and going up and down the stairs in a chair and those kind of skills are things we would focus on.