Active Care and Its Benefits: Defining Its Role and a Research Review

Active care is a type of rehabilitation that is designed to adjunct patients progress they have made through their therapy (chiropractic/physiotherapist), and to reduce the chance that pain will return. Typically, active care treatments are in the form of exercise that are customized for each patient. It helps patients utilize pain and discomfort as a tool to achieve balance in their bodies by allowing pain to direct intention toward either facilitating underactive muscles and/or achieving efficient movement patterns. 

What this should look like is that although the chiropractor/physiotherapist will perform hands on treatment on the patient when they are in the office, they will also teach the patient active mobilization techniques and exercises that they can do at home. This adjunct is designed to improve strength, stability, mobility and flexibility.

Patients are encouraged to perform these exercises on their own to help build strength and begin to correct any issues in their bodies that are causing pain. This also helps fear avoidance and catastrophizing very much associated with pain, specifically chronic pain.

The biggest take away is that active care emphasizes participation and education on how to prevent problems or keep them from recurring. Below is a comparison chart to further clarify the difference.

Active Care    Passive Care

Increases your knowledge Minimal verbal education

Reconstruction  Patch jobs  

Pain confrontation  Pain avoidance behavior

No labels, focus on function  Labeled with disease name

Long-term relief Short-term relief

Independent patient Dependent patient

Our current passive health care system is failing. Per the WHO, The US ranks #1 in health care spending while ranking a dismal 37th in overall health. Do not fall victim to the current system. At Great Lakes Physical Medicine, we take significant steps to educate our patients about the power of active care and the concept of taking responsibility for your own health.

See links for current research that evaluates active care and its efficacy.

https://academic.oup.com/painmedicine/article/15/S1/S104/1823770

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5896844/pdf/10.1177_2164956118768492.pdf