If one or more of the muscles or tendons in your rotator cuffs gets injured, it can become painful for you to move your arm. Since this pain can severely impact your quality of life, it's important to treat a rotator cuff injury correctly. To do this, assess whether you are dealing with a minor or major injury, which will help you decide between treating the injury at home with ice, rest, and over-the-counter pain killers or if you need medical care. Method 1 - Treating a Minor Injury at Home 1 → Determine if your injury can be treated at home. Some rotator cuff injuries are just mild pulls of the muscles that will heal with proper treatment at home. However, others are debilitating and require medical treatment to heal properly. If you have discomfort when you move your shoulder but are not in excruciating pain, you likely only have a mild injury. If the shoulder area is deformed or misshapen, has severe pain, or you can’t move it, you likely have a severe injury that requires im...