Blog for Victory
Hi, I'm Nell Mead. I'm a former Army physiotherapist and I specialise in sports medicine and back pain. This is my blog, where I write about issues that are on my mind. Some of these are about issues that are specific to particular injuries or medical conditions but I will also be updating you on events occurring inside Victory and in the wider world of medical rehabilitation. I also publish guest posts by Victory's other therapists whenever I can persuade them to sit still for long enough to write something!
When we're not writing, we're offering appointments at The Foundry in Liverpool Street. We'd love to see your comments on our posts - and we'd love to meet you even more, so do pop by and meet the team.
Path to Victory
If we know our bodies well and recognise that there is something wrong, most of us have a regular doctor or therapist of some description whom we trust to steer us in the right direction. (A Royal Marine friend of mine once told me that most Marines have two numbers on speed dial: the mistress and the chiropractor!)
But no single doctor or therapist can possibly have all the answers – and nor will they always know exactly which direction is going to be best for you. So what do you do when you have reached the limit of their expertise, or when their well-meaning suggestions aren’t having quite the effect you’d hoped?
That’s where Victory can help.
At Victory, we work to an interdisciplinary model. That means that not only are our doctors, physiotherapists, performance psychologists, nutrition therapists, podiatrists and rehabilitation therapists under one roof, but we work as a team, talking to each other and bouncing ideas off each other constantly.
Our premium service is the Victory Interdisciplinary Assessment (VIA).
When you call us to book a VIA, one of our top clinicians will ring you back at a mutually convenient time to discuss your issue with you. As a result of that call, we will put together an interdisciplinary team that is focused on your specific problems.
For example, if you are a rugby player with a badly sprained ankle, you are likely to need a physiotherapist to help you restore mobility and motor control, and a rehabilitation therapist to help you regain strength, power and endurance. But for even better results, you may also benefit from seeing a podiatrist to give you insoles that could help to prevent you from turning your ankle again, and a performance psychologist to you trust the ankle again, so that in your next big match, you are able to focus on the ball and the game plan, and not on whether you are about to twist your ankle!
This rugby player would see a Victory team consisting of a physiotherapist, rehabilitation therapist, podiatrist and performance psychologist at the VIA. After lots of discussion and clinical testing, the player and the Victory team would agree on performance goals, and work out how best to achieve them. The plan they come up with is the player’s Path to Victory – a timetable of appointments with the team, scheduled to fit in with the player’s diary and designed to get him back to peak performance as quickly as possible.
Victory will be offering VIAs as soon as we have premises! Watch this space for further news.
If you would like an appointment with me, please e-mail me
If you have any other comments or questions, I would love to hear them so please feel free to comment below (I will respond!) or to e-mail me.