The Dark Knight Rises To all the Doctors/Nurses in this room...

I watched it with my family and both my Mother and Sister are both nurses. They burst out laughing when he was magically healed from his back injury. Yeah it's not very realistic nor is even that plausible in the way that it was presented in the movie.

 

His vertebrae was basically out of alignment and was causing severe pain and physical ailment. It was simply popped back in or forced into its correct position. We can assume some time passed allowing him to regain his motor skills.

 

The man that pops his vertebrae back in to place clearly tells Bruce, "Stay like this until you can stand." Then he has the hallucination of Ra's and is wearing different clothes afterwards. We just fast forwarded through time is all. He wasn't 100% and he forced himself to stand.

 

With focused pressure and precision, it has to be done rather quickly. In this case, since it is a movie, its more dramatic if its punched back in so that Bruce can regain his motor skills and climb out of the hell hole. He pretty much had a stiff joint that was twisted. Once its punched, the twisted joint is released and falls back into its normal position. A person can then regain their strength and start to walk, bend, twist, turn, etc.

And I do not recommend having anyone punch an injured back. Quite frankly, you'd have to be seriously skilled to have that much precision and just the right amount of force to do this so while it IS a corny moment, its not impossible. Its just better and more dramatic that way than say having the guy massage his back. Get it now?