All the books below lay out clear protocols for objective assessment – active, passive, resistive. These are often full range movements, so the question that often comes up at the workshops is “How do we discover the cause, when people are too much in pain to move!”
Our anatomy has to be at its best understanding, piecing together the antagonist/agonist/synergist. Always keeping in mind, ‘Red Flags’, and the quality of their pain. We make a plan, outlining which techniques we are going to use, the depth of treatment and how much pain free passive movement might be useful.
Over the next 2-3 treatments, improvement may occur then we can re-assess with all our objective assessment skills and measure new ranges of movement (ROM), checking the ease that may have been brought about with the tissue. This may challenge what we first assessed, which is fine, and now we develop a new plan.
Objective assessment is such a great procedure as an initial assessment to create a plan. To re-assess, it gives the patient a picture of where they started and how far they have come, it gives us the ability to be clear, and it promotes reflection both for us as the therapist and the patient.
Books:
Thomas Hendrickson, Massage and Manual Therapy for Orthopedic Conditions, Second Edition, (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins), 2009
Nicola J Petty, and Ann P Moore, Neuromusculoskeletal Examination and Assessment, Second Edition, (Harcourt Publishers Ltd.), 1999, 2001
Nancy C. Cutter, and C. George Kevorkian, Handbook of Manual Testing, (The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.), 1999
Florence Peterson Kendall, et al. Muscles: Testing and function with posture and pain, Fifth Edition,(Lippincott Williams & Wilkins), 2005