The American Physical Therapy Association celebrates National Physical Therapy Month during October. Because of our close connection to the physical therapy industry, ProHealthcareProducts.com celebrates the occasion alongside the APTA and physical therapy clinics throughout the United States.

Physical therapists and others associated with the industry are encouraged during October to highlight the benefits of physical therapy to the public, providing opportunities for people to become more educated about physical therapy.

Here are a couple suggestions for making the most out of National Physical Therapy Month.

Hold an Open House at Your Clinic

Because you often spend your entire workday inside your clinic, you may start to think that everyone knows what you know about physical therapy, including the benefits of using the many different types of treatments you administer to patients every day.

The truth is that there are lots of people who could benefit from physical therapy treatments who don’t know much or anything about what happens inside your clinic. If they aren’t being referred to you from their primary care doctor or some other way, there is a disconnect that may be keeping them in pain and leaving you without a customer.

Holding an open house in your clinic and inviting the community to come check out what you can do to keep them healthy is a great way to increase awareness of the benefits of physical therapy in general and will make your specific clinic more accessible to potential clients. National Physical Therapy Month is a great excuse to hold an open house or two.

Use Social Media to Promote the use of Physical Therapy

Your clinic should be using social media to at least some extent to interact with patients and potential customers. Using your social medica accounts, use National Physical Therapy Month to highlight educational data about what’s involved in physical thereapy in addition to the typical posts you make on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus, LinkedIn or whatever social media channels you use. There are several communities on LinkedIn and other professional groups that you can subscribe to get get ideas on what to present to your social media audience. You might consider putting together a 31-day schedule of posts about what physical therapists do and post one each day during the month of October. You could highlight some element of your practice each week during the month.

Whatever you’re planning to do to celebrate National Physical Therapy Month, make sure you don’t miss out on the opportunity to move forward the practice of physical therapy.