Thank you for joining me from SAVAHCS VA Hospital.
This is your physical therapy department.
Today we'll be talking briefly how to use ia TENS unit safely.
For those of you who don't have prior experience, a TENS unit
unit is a small electrical device to manage chronic pain.
When done, so, it can be quite effective.
Along with the TENS unit, you'll receive
all the other equipment you'll need, including the electrodes.
The electrodes are sticky patches of contact with your skin
and need to be replaced periodically as they dry out, stop subsequent to the skin.
You can simply contact our prosthetics department.
Their numbers listed on the sheet.
I don't advise you use a TENS unit
if you have a cardiac pacemaker implanted.
If that's the case, you want to speak to your primary
care provider to discuss other options.
When placing the
electrodes, you want to keep it away from areas on your face.
Your head, the front of your neck, also over your heart,
on your genitals or directly on your spine.
We ask that the skin be relatively clean
of any lotions, oils or muscle rubs.
That includes medicated, topical rubs
as well
If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me directly
at 520-792-1450.
Extension 2103.
Thank you.
OK, so you may have received your attention in the mail.
You may have picked it up here locally.
Either way, it's gonna come complete in this pack here.
What we want to do is go ahead and open it up.
You will retrieve the TENS unit,
which is a small black device with the screen on the front.
The first thing we want to do
is make sure we get the batteries inserted.
So we'll retrieve those from the pack and from the cellophane.
And feel comfortable.
Go ahead and place those in the unit itself.
Now, remember,
these are the rechargeable ones provided by the VA.
So we want to make sure we charge that about once a week or so.
The next piece of equipment you want to retrieve
will be one set of lead wires.
We'll do that and open up that bag
we'll take off the black twist tie
We're just trying to get that
wire enlongated
we'll notice that the wire has two ends,
one with some exposed plugs, one with a
right angle connection
We're going to take their right angle connection
and insert it right into the top of the unit,
just like so
We're going to go ahead and do that
for the left and the right side.
And you can feel comfortable
sort of elongating those wires, getting the twists and turns out of them.
Also will notice that each
side, each wire has a clear plastic wire divider there.
If you'd like, you can slide that down.
Maybe another eight inches or so.
That way we can expand those wires as needed.
So, again, we have the batteries inserted.
We have the lead wires inserted into the top
Now it's time to retrieve the electrodes.
now, remember, these are the sticky patches that make contact with your skin.
The cleaner
your skin is, the longer these will last.
So, again, we'll go ahead and open those up
Now, for some of our smaller treatment areas,
you may only want to utilize two electrodes.
The four areas that are larger,
we may want to utilize four
for today's purposes, we'll just be utilizing two.
But the rules still apply if we're using four
So we'll go ahead,
bring our attention down to the exposed wires.
And just as you can imagine, we'll make
good contact into the white
connecting piece of the electrode
All right.
Once we have two or four directly connected,
we'll look at that area of pain and we'll ask ourselves,
how do we want to place that?
And again, as long as you're bracketing
or surrounding the pain, you're doing it correctly.
Today, I've identified a place on my arm as a test site.
So that'll be the site of pain
will simply take the electrodes
off of the cellophane
make the surface contact with your skin.
Making sure all four corners
are pressed down
We'll set that cellophane aside
so once we have the batteries
inserted correctly, the lead wires are hooked up
and the electrodes are placed on this side of pain.
We can feel comfortable bringing our attention over to the third unit.
We'll open that up
first button you'll familiarize yourself
with is the large circular power button.
We'll tap that once in the screen.
Will come on blue
Now, if we were to tap that quickly,
you'll notice that it locks and unlocks the screen.
You'll know that because the the letters see,
it will be identifiable in the screen there.
So we'll make sure that it's unlocked.
Once we have it on, we'll bring our attention over to the mode.
Now, the mode
informs the machine of the particular parameters
that you're going to use during that treatment.
You can feel comfortable using any mode you like.
You can also change that mode about once a week.
Once we have a mode that we feel comfortable with,
we want to bring our attention right below that to the clock button.
And in increments of 15 minutes,
you can set your treatment duration.
So once we have it on,
we have the mode set and the time set.
We're done with that bottom portion.
We can close that off
Now we're going to bring our attention up towards the intensity dials.
Now, recognize that there is a dial for each wire.
And since I'm just using the two, I'm going to bring my attention
over to that dial
and in a clockwise fashion
I'm going to bring that intensity
up little by little.
Two things you'll see when you do that, you'll see
the intensity bars come up on the side there.
You'll also see a small yellow led light
light up, letting you know that that side is on
And even more important, you'll start to feel
that pins and needles sensation
Now, question
you might be asking yourself is how much is enough?
And that's generally a case by case
individual answer
A guideline should be it shouldn't be so strong
that you can't talk or or conduct normal activities,
but it
should be strong enough that you're feeling the sensation from the unit
and not the pain, at least not as intensely
Once you have the time set
and the dials are covered back up by the protective cover,
you should feel free putting this in your pocket
or on the chair next to you or on your belt. OK.