Guided rehab after surgery, so strength and movement come back properly
Recovery after surgery often continues for weeks or months. Physiotherapy can support movement and strength while following the plan agreed with your surgical team.
The recovery does not happen on its own
People are often surprised by how much work sits on the far side of an operation. The surgery is over in an afternoon. Getting a knee to bend fully again, or a shoulder to lift overhead without hitching, or a repaired tendon to take load without complaint, takes months of steady, slightly boring effort.
Left to itself a joint stiffens, the muscles around it lose size quickly, and the movement pattern you adopted while you were in pain tends to stay long after the pain has gone. None of that is dramatic. It just quietly limits what the operation was able to give you.
Post-operative rehabilitation is the structured version of that work: the right movements at the right stage, progressed when you are ready and held back when you are not, with someone checking that what you are doing at home matches what you think you are doing.
The common ones, and the less common ones
Joint replacements at the hip and knee. Ligament and cartilage work at the knee, including reconstruction and repair. Shoulder procedures, from rotator cuff repair to stabilisation and decompression. Tendon repairs at the Achilles and elsewhere. Ankle and foot surgery. Spinal procedures such as discectomy and decompression. Fractures that have been fixed with plates, screws or a nail.
They differ enormously in what is allowed and when, which is exactly why the protocol matters more than any general rule about rehab. What is safe at week three after one operation is far too early after another.
If your procedure is not on that list, it does not mean rehab is unavailable. It means the first conversation is about what your surgical team has asked for.
Their protocol sets the rules
Many operations come with a rehabilitation protocol from the surgical team: what can bear weight, what range of movement is permitted, when a brace or sling comes off, and what must not be done before a given week. Where there is one, it sets the rules.
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Bring the paperwork
The discharge letter, the operation note and any rehabilitation protocol you were given. If you have them digitally, that is fine. Those documents set the boundaries of everything that follows, so the first appointment reads them rather than assuming.
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Work inside the protocol
Rehab progresses to the timetable the surgical team set, not ahead of it. Where the protocol is ambiguous, or where progress is faster or slower than it anticipated, the question goes back to them rather than being decided here.
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Keep them informed
If something looks wrong, or a milestone is being missed by a distance, that gets raised with your consultant or GP promptly. Private physiotherapy sits alongside your surgical care, it does not replace it.
Whether you need a referral, discharge letter or written protocol before private rehabilitation can start depends on your operation and surgical team. This is confirmed with you before your first appointment, and appointments are self-pay.
Recovery measured in the things you want back
Post-operative rehab is often for people after a hip or knee replacement, where the goal is almost never a number on a chart. It is getting up from a low sofa without using the arms. Driving again. Walking the coast path to Southbourne without planning where to sit down. Getting back on the golf course, or back into the garden for a full afternoon.
Those goals shape the plan, because the exercises that get you off a low sofa are not the ones that get you comfortably down a flight of stairs. Being specific about what you want back makes the rehab specific too, and it makes progress obvious to you rather than only to the person writing it down.
Strength work is the backbone of it. Muscle is lost quickly after an operation at any age and rebuilt more slowly after sixty, which is an argument for starting properly rather than an argument for going gently.
Paying, timing and getting here
Post-operative rehabilitation is self-pay, so the published prices are what you pay directly and there is no insurance claim to arrange.
On timing, post-operative rehab usually means a run of appointments over several months rather than one or two visits, tapering as you become able to run the programme yourself. That is worth knowing before you start, and the cost of a course is set out openly on the pricing page rather than discussed after the first appointment.
On getting here, the clinic is a single room at street level on Roumelia Lane in Boscombe. Weekday appointments run to 20:00 and Saturday afternoons are open from 14:00, which helps if you are relying on a lift from someone who works.
Book post-operative rehabilitation
Bring your discharge letter and any protocol you were given. Shop 2, 4-6 Roumelia Ln, Boscombe, Bournemouth BH5 1EU.
Call Deborah WhatsApp Contact the clinic Call, text or WhatsApp 07305 447682