Abstract
After a car accident, many people leave the emergency room with pain medicine, muscle relaxers, or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). These medicines can help with short-term pain and inflammation, but they do not always address loss of joint motion, muscle injury, ligament strain, nerve irritation, or movement problems.
For this reason, personal injury recovery may require more than waiting to see whether the pain goes away.
At Injury Medical Clinic PA in El Paso, Texas, Dr. Alexander Jimenez, DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CCST, CFMP, IFMCP, ATN, uses an integrative model that brings chiropractic care, medical assessment, functional medicine, rehabilitation, and selected advanced therapies into a coordinated recovery plan. Dr. Maria Guadalupe Cardenas, MD, an internal medicine physician with more than 40 years of medical experience, also provides medical direction and collaborative care.
This article explains how early assessment, detailed SOAP notes, functional testing, chiropractic care, rehabilitation, laser therapy, selected regenerative procedures, and careful medical oversight may help guide an injured person from the first days after an accident toward greater function and, when appropriate, maximum medical improvement.
Why “Wait and See” May Not Be Enough After an Accident
Emergency departments serve an essential purpose after a serious collision. Their first job is to identify injuries that may threaten a person’s life, brain, spinal cord, organs, or bones.
Emergency testing may rule out:
Fractures
Internal bleeding
Severe head injuries
Spinal instability
Life-threatening chest or abdominal injuries
Other medical emergencies
Once these dangers have been ruled out, a patient may be discharged with instructions to rest, follow up with another provider, and use medication for pain or muscle spasms.
That does not mean emergency care failed. It means the emergency department completed its main job.
However, medications alone usually do not restore lost range of motion, retrain damaged movement patterns, strengthen injured tissues, or determine why a person continues to have pain during driving, working, sleeping, lifting, or walking.
This is where follow-up injury care becomes important.
Delays in evaluation may also create gaps in the medical history. From a medical-legal standpoint, early records can help establish when symptoms appeared, what the examination showed, and how the condition changed over time (Farahi Law Firm Team, 2025; Integrated Health & Injury Center, 2026).
An Early Multimodal Personal Injury Assessment
A complete personal injury evaluation should look beyond a pain score.
For example, a person may say that neck pain is only a “5 out of 10.” That number tells only part of the story.
The patient may also be unable to:
Turn the head while driving
Sit through a workday
Lift a child
Sleep through the night
Bend normally
Stand for long periods
Exercise
Walk without guarding
Perform normal job duties
These functional problems show how an injury affects everyday life.
Dr. Jimenez’s clinical approach emphasizes examining the whole injury pattern, including the spine, joints, nerves, muscles, ligaments, posture, movement, and functional limitations. His published personal injury material also emphasizes documenting how symptoms affect work, sleep, driving, movement, and normal activities (Jimenez, 2026a).
An early examination may include orthopedic testing, neurologic testing, range-of-motion measurements, strength testing, posture assessment, reflexes, sensory testing, movement analysis, and imaging when clinically justified.
Red flags or significant neurologic findings should lead to immediate medical evaluation or specialist referral.
Why Chiropractic Care Fits Into Accident Recovery
Chiropractic care is not simply about “putting the spine back in place.”
Modern evidence-informed chiropractic treatment often combines manual therapy with movement, exercise, soft-tissue treatment, education, and rehabilitation.
Research supports spinal manipulation as one nondrug option that may produce modest improvements in pain and function for some patients with acute or chronic low-back pain. Evidence also supports multimodal treatment that combines manual therapy, exercise, and patient education for certain neck pain and whiplash-associated disorders (Bussières et al., 2016; National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health [NCCIH], n.d.).
In personal injury care, chiropractic treatment may therefore be used to help:
Improve spinal and joint movement
Reduce stiffness
Address muscle guarding
Restore safer movement patterns
Improve mobility
Support gradual return to activity
Prepare the patient for strengthening and rehabilitation
The treatment must still be matched to the individual. Not every patient should receive the same adjustment, number of visits, or rehabilitation program.
Phase 1: Days 1–14 — Acute Injury and Pain Control
The first phase focuses on identifying the injury and preventing unnecessary loss of function.
The goals may include:
Ruling out serious medical problems
Establishing a diagnosis
Recording baseline pain and function
Reducing muscle guarding
Improving safe movement
Controlling inflammation when appropriate
Beginning gentle rehabilitation
Ordering imaging when medically necessary
Chiropractic care during this stage may be modified because an acutely injured patient may not tolerate aggressive treatment.
Medical treatment may also be appropriate. NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, or other medications can have a legitimate role when prescribed for the right patient. The goal is not to reject conventional medicine but to avoid making medication the only part of the recovery plan.
Laser or photobiomodulation therapy may also be used as an adjunct in selected musculoskeletal conditions. Research suggests potential benefits for some pain conditions, although results vary by diagnosis, laser dose, treatment parameters, and study quality (Clijsen et al., 2017).
Phase 2: Weeks 3–8 — Stabilization and Tissue Recovery
As severe pain begins to settle, the focus can move toward stability and rebuilding function.
Treatment may include:
Progressive chiropractic care
Mobility exercises
Soft-tissue therapy
Core stabilization
Strengthening
Balance training
Neuromuscular re-education
Posture correction
Functional rehabilitation
Nutrition and lifestyle support
The question shifts from “Does it hurt?” to “Can the body perform normally again?”
This distinction is important.
A patient can report less pain while still having weakness, restricted motion, poor balance, nerve symptoms, or difficulty performing work.
Where Regenerative Therapies May Fit
Certain patients with persistent tendon, ligament, joint, or other musculoskeletal problems may be evaluated for regenerative or orthobiologic procedures.
Platelet-rich plasma, or PRP, is one example. PRP is made from a patient’s own blood and concentrates platelets containing growth factors involved in normal healing.
PRP is being used for a range of musculoskeletal conditions, but results depend heavily on the diagnosis. Research continues, and Johns Hopkins notes that PRP remains investigational for many musculoskeletal uses rather than an FDA-approved treatment for every injury (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2026).
Therefore, regenerative medicine should not be treated as a cure-all.
The patient should first receive a proper diagnosis. Before treatment, review the risks, expected benefits, alternatives, costs, and available evidence.
What About Tissue-Recovery Peptides?
Peptide therapy has attracted significant attention in sports medicine, wellness, and regenerative medicine.
Some experimental peptides are being studied because of possible effects on inflammation, cellular signaling, wound healing, or tissue repair.
However, patients should understand an important limitation:
Not every peptide promoted for tissue repair has strong human clinical evidence or FDA approval.
For example, the FDA has identified significant safety-information gaps for compounded BPC-157 and has raised concerns involving immunogenicity, peptide impurities, and limited human safety data (U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA], 2026).
For that reason, peptide therapy should not be presented as proven “tissue rebuilding.”
If a peptide is considered, it should occur within the provider’s legal scope, under appropriate medical oversight, after an informed discussion of its experimental or off-label status when applicable.
Phase 3: Week 8 and Beyond — Functional Rehabilitation and MMI
The later stage of recovery focuses heavily on function.
Patients may progress toward:
Normal range of motion
Better strength
Greater spinal stability
Improved endurance
Safer lifting
Improved balance
Better work tolerance
Return to exercise
Return to normal daily activity
The treatment team may repeat measurements taken during the first examination.
This provides a comparison between where the patient started and where the patient is now.
Maximum Medical Improvement, or MMI, generally describes the point when substantial additional recovery is no longer expected. Under Texas workers’ compensation terminology, clinical MMI occurs when an injury has improved about as much as reasonably expected (Texas Department of Insurance, 2026).
Importantly, week 8 does not automatically mean a patient has reached MMI.
Some injuries improve rapidly. Others require months of rehabilitation. Serious disc, ligament, nerve, joint, or traumatic injuries may take considerably longer.
SOAP Notes: Building the Story of Recovery
One major part of high-quality personal injury care is documentation.
SOAP commonly means:
S — Subjective: What the patient reports.
O — Objective: What the examination, imaging, measurements, or testing shows.
A — Assessment: The provider’s clinical interpretation and diagnosis.
P — Plan: What treatment, testing, rehabilitation, or referral comes next.
Strong records should explain more than “patient still has pain.”
They can document:
Range of motion
Strength
Neurologic findings
Pain distribution
Functional limitations
Response to treatment
Changes in daily activity
Work restrictions
Imaging findings
Referrals
Setbacks
Progress toward goals
Medical records help create a chronological clinical picture and may help attorneys, insurers, experts, and other providers understand diagnosis, treatment, function, and causation issues (Tavrn, 2026).
Good documentation does not guarantee a settlement or increase a claim's value on its own. Its purpose is to create an accurate, defensible account of what happened medically.
One Clinic, Two Clinical Perspectives
A major feature of the Injury Medical Clinic PA model is the combination of chiropractic and medical care.
Dr. Alexander Jimenez is publicly listed as a doctor of chiropractic and an advanced practice registered nurse/family nurse practitioner. His professional materials also list credentials including FNP-BC, CCST, CFMP, IFMCP, and ATN (Jimenez, n.d.).
This allows the clinic model to connect biomechanical injury assessment with broader medical evaluation, functional medicine, rehabilitation, personal injury care, and care coordination.
Dr. Maria Guadalupe Cardenas, MD, works within this multidisciplinary model as medical director and collaborative physician. The American Medical Association identifies Dr. Cardenas as an internal medicine physician practicing in El Paso, and public provider data show medical training dating to 1982, giving her more than four decades of medical experience. Her Texas medical license is listed as J2933, and her NPI as 1164426749. Clinic materials identify her as board-certified in internal medicine and describe her role as providing medical direction alongside Dr. Jimenez’s chiropractic and advanced-practice clinical work.
Clinical Observations From Dr. Alexander Jimenez
Across his professional publications, Dr. Jimenez describes several patterns that repeatedly appear in personal injury practice.
His clinical observations emphasize that accident recovery should examine:
Structural injury
Joint motion
Nerve function
Soft-tissue damage
Strength
Sleep
Daily activity
Nutrition
Inflammation
Functional limitations
Long-term rehabilitation
He also emphasizes that some symptoms appear after the initial accident rather than immediately and that recovery should be measured through function rather than pain alone (Jimenez, 2026a, 2026b).
These are clinical observations and should not be confused with controlled research. However, they explain the reasoning behind an integrated approach: reduce symptoms, restore mechanics, support tissue recovery, rebuild function, and document each step.
Moving Beyond “Wait and See”
Personal injury care does not need to become a choice between conventional medicine and chiropractic care.
The stronger model is coordinated care.
Emergency medicine can identify serious injuries. Medical providers can manage medications, systemic conditions, diagnostics, and medical risks. Chiropractic care can address selected mechanical and movement problems. Rehabilitation can rebuild strength and function. Functional medicine may address broader nutrition, sleep, metabolic, and lifestyle factors. Selected laser or regenerative procedures may be considered when supported by the diagnosis and evidence.
At Injury Medical Clinic PA in El Paso, the goal of the multidisciplinary model described by Dr. Alexander Jimenez and Dr. Maria Cardenas is to connect these areas, rather than forcing the injured patient to navigate completely separate systems.
The result is a simple recovery pathway:
Assess early. Document carefully. Reduce pain. Restore movement. Support healing. Rebuild function. Measure progress. Determine long-term needs.
For an accident patient, that offers a much clearer path than simply waiting and hoping the pain disappears.
References
Bussières, A. E., et al. (2016). The treatment of neck pain-associated disorders and whiplash-associated disorders: A clinical practice guideline. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 39(8).
Clijsen, R., Brunner, A., Barbero, M., Clarys, P., & Taeymans, J. (2017). Effects of low-level laser therapy on pain in patients with musculoskeletal disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, 53(4), 603–610.
Farahi Law Firm Team. (2025, February 18). 5 ways a delay in treatment can devalue your injury case.
Integrated Health & Injury Center. (2026, March 6). How chiropractic documentation strengthens your personal injury case.
Jimenez, A. (n.d.). About Dr. Alexander Jimenez, DC, APRN, FNP-BC.
Jimenez, A. (2026a, June 3). Why personal injury attorneys look for integrative chiropractic clinics after motor vehicle accidents. LinkedIn.
Jimenez, A. (2026b, March 17). Integrative chiropractic for personal injury recovery success. Personal Injury Doctor Group.
Jimenez, A. (2026c). Integrative chiropractic clinics help personal injury claims. El Paso Back Clinic.
Johns Hopkins Medicine. (2026). Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections.
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. (n.d.). Spinal manipulation: What you need to know.
Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation. (2026). Workers’ compensation insurance glossary.
Tavrn. (2026). Personal injury medical records request: A legal guide.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2026). Certain bulk drug substances for use in compounding that may present significant safety risks.
The information herein is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified healthcare professional or licensed physician and is not medical advice. We encourage you to make healthcare decisions based on your research and partnership with a qualified healthcare professional. Our information scope is limited to chiropractic, musculoskeletal, and physical medicine, as well as wellness, sensitive health issues, and functional medicine articles, topics, and discussions. We provide and facilitate clinical collaboration with specialists across disciplines. Each specialist is governed by their professional scope of practice and the jurisdiction in which they are licensed. We utilize functional health and wellness protocols to treat and support care for musculoskeletal injuries or disorders. Our videos, posts, topics, subjects, and insights cover clinical matters and issues that directly or indirectly support our clinical scope of practice. Our office has made a reasonable effort to provide supportive citations and identify relevant research studies for our posts. We provide copies of supporting research studies upon request to regulatory boards and the public.
We are here to help you and your family.
Blessings
Dr. Alex Jimenez, DC, MSACP, APRN, FNP-BC*, CCST, IFMCP, CFMP, ATN
email: coach@elpasofunctionalmedicine.com
Multidisciplinary Licensing & Board Certifications:
Licensed as a Doctor of Chiropractic (DC) in Texas & New Mexico*
Texas DC License #: TX5807, Verified: TX5807
New Mexico DC License #: NM-DC2182, Verified: NM-DC2182
Multi-State Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN*) in Texas & Multi-States
Multi-State Compact APRN License by Endorsement (42 States)
Texas APRN License #: 1191402, Verified: 1191402 *
Florida APRN License #: 11043890, Verified: APRN11043890 *
New York APRN License #: N25929, Verified: APRN-N25929*
License Verification Link: Nursys License Verifier
* Prescriptive Authority Authorized
ANCC FNP-BC: Board Certified Nurse Practitioner*
Compact Status: Multi-State License: Authorized to Practice in 40 States*
Graduate with Honors: ICHS: MSN-FNP (Family Nurse Practitioner Program)
Degree Granted. Master's in Family Practice MSN Diploma (Cum Laude)
Dr. Alex Jimenez, DC, APRN, FNP-BC*, CFMP, IFMCP, ATN, CCST
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Dr. Maria Cardenas, MD
(Board Certified in Internal Medicine)
Medical Director & Collaborative Physician
NPI # 1164426749
MD License #: J2933
