Knowing the difference between health professions and what services they provide can be confusing. You may have personal experience with one or all of the above health professionals and may know there can be some degree of similarities in what they can provide. Their roles and services within workplace health, however, may differ significantly, and understanding each field in a bit more depth is largely helpful. Your workplace or employer may require support in the areas of injury management, rehabilitation or workplace health, but knowing what profession is most suitable for those needs can be difficult. In this post, we’re going to explore what the differences are between physiotherapy, occupational therapy and chiropractic. This will help increase your knowledge across each profession, what services and skills they provide, and which one may be best suited to support your team, workforce and workplace environment.

What is Chiropractic?

Chiropractors are specialised health professionals specialising in treating injuries, mostly related to musculoskeletal issues and pain. Chiropractors can provide a variety of techniques – some similar to physiotherapists, with regards to musculoskeletal injury care, non-invasive care & pain management. Commonly they can co-treat the same conditions with similar manual techniques and also provide similar advice to improve current conditions and dysfunctions. Chiropractic services can be focused towards pain relief, spinal alignment concerns and joint discomfort. Treatment strategies will include manual therapies such as spinal and joint adjustments, soft tissue techniques, electrotherapies and dry needling/acupuncture, but they can also provide exercise therapy and guidance. Common injuries attended to by chiropractors will be neck and spinal injuries, headaches and other persistent joint pain concerns in the body. Treatment will usually focus on specific areas to perform adjustments and manipulations effectively and accurately.

Physiotherapists are very well suited to workplace health concerns due to the unique abilities of attending and triaging injuries as first responders, providing efficient and accurate diagnosis, and delivering immediate onsite treatment and management plans. Conveniently, they are able to provide suitable duties plans, workers compensation and insurance claim management, job safety risk assessments, referral to key stakeholders (site GP’s, radiology, specialists), manual handling training and pre-employment medicals. They are also referred to as a profession specifically for injury management by GP’s and specialists in musculoskeletal and rehabilitation injuries. In recent times with limitations applied to in-person and physical service delivery due to the pandemic, telehealth physiotherapy services have been well utilised. These have been proven to be efficient in many ways such as remote health care, rural sites and sole workers, and others unable to access services or attend an appointment in person. Healthcare and management advice has also been demonstrated to be just as effective as intervention provided in person.

The above information aims to provide a clear understanding of the capabilities of physiotherapists, occupational therapists and chiropractors. There are often similarities, but also key differences, which will inform what services are best for your specific health needs. Each profession should only provide the set of services they have received specialised training in, and which is within their scope of practice.

Please explore additional resources in this space to best build your knowledge on each professional service, what they can provide and which would be most suitable for your specific needs and goals. Utilising relevant businesses and professionals within each field may be supportive. Be sure to refer to current and reliable online sources and other platforms to gain further understanding of each professional field and the services they’re qualified for, as Australian healthcare is constantly evolving. Having a clear idea of what your aims and objectives are will help with identifying what professional service you would benefit from most. Please feel free to contact Employ Health to get support for any concerns or questions.