How Long Is Bed Rest After Shoulder Surgery?

A common question you can ask is how long bed rest is after shoulder surgery, and the answer is zero. Zero bed rest.

There are still physical laborers today, but most of our patients are knowledge workers. They work at desks and in offices, so they don’t require a lot of manual work with their shoulders.

Let’s say you fall into that category like most people do. I say go ahead and just take the week off of work. It just makes your life easier. It’s still surgery. You’ll be groggy for the first day or two, and if you go back to work immediately the next day, you could.

I’ve had surgery on my shoulder, and I can tell you, when I was a resident, I went back within a day or two and I was like, why did I do this? Why did I just chill out? So just chill out the first week and then go back to next week and you’ll be fine.

So, just take that week off. In our practice, we do surgeries on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So I say, just take the week off, take it easy, let your body heal the rest, and then go back to work the next week.