Electrotherapy is a physical method used in physiotherapy. It is used widely among people and animals. With electrotherapy one can for example have an influence in pain signals moving in the nervous system, muscle contraction and tissue metabolism. Electrotherapy can help in acute or chronic pain and activate weakened muscles. The importance of electrotherapy can be seen in the number of searches in the world wide web: there are almost one million hits.

As a thesis we made a guide book of teaching electrotherapy for Oulu University of Applied Science’s physiotherapy teachers. Our aim was to create an easy reading and useful guide book which includes up-to-date information about two forms of electrotherapy in Finnish. The guide book includes the most needed information about TENS and NMES. While doing our thesis we got to deepen our electrotherapy knowledge and create fresh material for literature in Finnish.

Our thesis is functional and it contains two parts: written report and the guide book of teaching electrotherapy. The written report includes information about electrotherapy, TENS, NMES and how to make a guide book. The guide book includes basic information, indications, contraindications and treatment examples about these two forms of electrotherapy which are used in physiotherapy. We chose our example treatments based on recent research. The guide book is made of three parts, and it can be used as one or as separate parts.

The guide book of teaching electrotherapy will be used in Oulu University of Applied Sciences’ degree programme in physiotherapy. Our guide book does not include all the variety of electrotherapy so the future student physiotherapists have a chance to make their thesis about those. There does not exist many theses about electrotherapy so we think there is a need for them because of the importance of the topic.