Pain is often what prompts patients to seek the care of a musculoskeletal rehabilitation clinician. In today's episode, Dr Paul Mintken guides listeners through different ways to work with a person to help make sense of, and explain, unexplained pain. Dr Mintken (Hawai'i Pacific University) is a board-certified Orthopaedic Clinical Specialist and a Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic and Manual Physical Therapists. ------------------------------ RESOURCES JOSPT Viewpoint article - The ...
Jun 30, 2025
In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr Olivia Abdoo (Ultimate Fighting Championship), we dive deeper into one of the most common injuries in mixed martial arts (MMA) - concussion. Dr Abdoo's experience treating UFC athletes provides an insight into working with athletes for whom skills including wrestling, striking, and grappling are crucial to performing well. How to approach educating the athlete and everyone involved with them about concussion, ensuring the athlete can participate safely while...
Jun 23, 2025
Given how common rotator cuff tears are, chances are you will work with someone who has a tear at some point in your career. Do you know what patients will want from their rehabilitation? Are you confident with your approach to managing rotator cuff tears? Today, Dr Kathryn Fahy, physiotherapist and researcher from Aspetar Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine Hospital, Doha discusses the CALMeR Cuff pathway. Dr Fahy developed CALMeR Cuff with patients, clinicians and researchers to guide care for p...
Jun 16, 2025
A mention of pre-professional or professional dance might conjure thoughts of relentless, gruelling training hours, incredible performances and bodies pushed through high musculoskeletal demands. Dr Melanie Fuller (University of Southern Queensland) has devoted her clinical career of almost 20 years to working with dancers - helping them stay healthy and performing well - and she has a similar focus in her research work. Today we discuss the prevalence of musculoskeletal injury, specifically foc...
Jun 09, 2025
Tune in today for the latest consensus on rehabilitation approaches for people who have had meniscus surgery. Orthopaedic surgeons and physical therapists from Europe and the US debated the best research evidence, and brought extensive clinical experience to the table, ultimately producing a 2-part series of summary papers. Dr Arielle Giordano (University of Delaware) was one of the physical therapy leads on the project, and today she shares the most important messages from the consensus. ------...
May 26, 2025
In the return of Sports Corner, Dr Olivia Abdoo chats all things UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and MMA (mixed martial arts). UFC combines wrestling, grappling and striking, which makes for complex demands that contribute to complex injury epidemiology. Whether working with a Championship fighter or a recreational martial arts athlete, Dr Abdoo provides excellent guidance for clinicians who are planning rehabilitation and return to sport. Concussion is common in UFC, so stay tuned for an u...
May 12, 2025•23 min
Researchers are increasingly partnering with patients, clinicians and others who use research to design, conduct, report and disseminate research studies. Today we hear about a conversation that involved over 600 patients, clinicians and carers, who were supported to nominate their top priorities for research on shoulder pain. Kristian Lyng (physiotherapst, PhD student at Aalborg University's Department of Health Science and Technology, and Center for General Practice) led the work as part of hi...
Apr 21, 2025•24 min
There's a range of different interventions at your disposal when managing spine pain. Today we're focusing on spinal manipulative therapy, and asking questions like: does it matter how you apply a manipulation to get the best outcomes for the patient? Answering the questions is Dr Casper Nim from the University of Southern Denmark. Casper is an Associate Professor, chiropractor, and senior researcher at the Spine Centre of Southern Denmark. ------------------------------ RESOURCES Does it matter...
Apr 14, 2025•26 min
The anterior talofibular ligament (ATFL) and the Achilles tendon captures much of our ankle attention. As JOSPT Insights listeners know, there's plenty more to the ankle than the ATFL. Today, Liz Bayley shares her approach to diagnosing, managing and ideally, preventing ankle pain in active people. Liz covers diagnosing the problem, where imaging fits, and how to support return to function, including high-level sport. Liz is a former professional dancer, who now works as a dance-specialist physi...
Mar 31, 2025•26 min
Hip arthroscopy is a common surgical procedure in athletes and active people, and it's not surprising that this clinical population is focused on returning to sport. Today, Dr Matthew King, physiotherapist and Senior Lecturer from La Trobe University's Discipline of Physiotherapy in Melbourne, Australia, discussed return to sport outcomes after hip arthroscopy. Dr King led a team that synthesised and analysed return to sport outcomes after hip arthroscopy from 45 studies and over 5000 participan...
Mar 17, 2025•21 min
Myofascial pain syndrome is common - affecting somewhere around 1 in every 5 people. Yet there is plenty of debate about what causes myofascial pain syndrome, how to diagnose it, and even whether myofascial pain syndrome is a primary condition. Today, Professor Chad Cook (Duke University) discusses whether it is even possible to differentiate myofascial pain syndrome from other pain conditions, and the implications for you, the clinician. ------------------------------ RESOURCES Myofascial pain ...
Mar 10, 2025•19 min
Postmenopausal women can build some serious bone AND stay safe with the right instruction and the right load. What’s the right load? Dr Belinda Beck can answer that, and in today's episode, she takes us through the results of the LIFTMOR trial. With the right instruction and supervision, postmenopausal women can be lifting 85% of their 1 repetition maximum safely, and make a substantial change in their bone density, strength, and quality of life while doing it. ------------------------------ RES...
Mar 03, 2025•24 min
Clinicians appreciate the value of a trustworthy clinical practice guideline for helping guide decisions in practice. Professor François Desmeules (University of Montréal) led an international team of shoulder experts who synthesised the latest evidence on diagnosing and non-surgically managing rotator cuff tendinopathy. Today he shares the headlines of the CPG and explains how the guideline group made sense of all the evidence to come up with recommendations for assessment, diagnosis, treatment...
Feb 17, 2025•22 min
How do you approach assessing pain when you're working with athletes? What tools do you find most helpful? Today, sports physiotherapist and researcher, Ciarán Purcell (University of Limerick, Ireland) describes the project he is leading to gather consensus from athletes and sports medicine & rehabilitation clinicians about how best to assess athletes' pain. Listen to the end to learn about how you can get involved in the consensus! ------------------------------ RESOURCES IOC consensus on m...
Feb 10, 2025•24 min
The latest update to the midportion Achilles tendinopathy Clinical Practice Guideline is hot off the presses! Dr Ruth Chimenti is a co-author of the updated clinical practice guideline, “Achilles Pain, Stiffness, and Muscle Power Deficits: Midportion Achilles Tendinopathy Revision 2024”, and joins JOSPT Insights to share the key updates relevant for your practice. Dr Chimenti highlights the most important changes from the last CPG update in 2018, including specifics on the best way to exercise, ...
Feb 03, 2025•21 min
Did you know that only about 10% of the participants in sports medicine and sports physical therapy research are women? When people are under-represented in research, it might mean that clinicians and researchers miss key concerns of women and girls when working with them to achieve the best outcomes of treatment. Melissa Haberfield - physiotherapist and PhD candidate at the La Trobe Sports and Exercise Medicine Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia - shares the results of her work with women ...
Jan 27, 2025•24 min
You don't have to go far to find a media story warning people off the high impacts of running, especially on concrete, and claiming that running is no good for your knees. Maybe you've had someone in the clinic who worries that running will wear their joints out? Today's guest has dedicated his career to helping runners stay healthy and running for life, and is adamant that running is a great physical activity choice, even for people with osteoarthritis and joint replacement. Dr Jean François Es...
Jan 20, 2025•25 min
In today's part 2 of an NMES masterclass from Dr Elanna Arhos (Northwestern University) and Dr Naoaki Ito (University of Wisconsin - Madison), we're getting into the nitty gritty of how to support patients to get the most out of a very beneficial intervention. Drs Arhos and Ito, and their team have tested a mix of common stimulators available on the market today, and are here to share the results with us. Let them help you make an informed decision about your next equipment purchase for your cli...
Jan 13, 2025•16 min
Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) hasn't quite had the coverage it deserves, especially when one considers the strength of evidence supporting NMES as a musculoskeletal rehabilitation intervention Today, Drs Elanna Arhos (Northwestern University) and Naoaki Ito (University of Wisconsin - Madison) are re-visiting how NMES is applied in sports clinical practice. Get the low-down on why you need NMES in your sports rehabilitation toolkit, and how to figure out dose and intensity. In part ...
Jan 06, 2025•23 min
Dr Robert-Jan de Vos, sports physician and associate professor at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, dives deep into all things Achilles tendinopathy. In part 2 of this series, Dr de Vos covers the multitude of options for treatment, outside of exercise therapy. Should you and the patient consider corticosteroid injections, PRP injections, heel lifts, shockwave, NSAIDs, or surgery? And when? What are the important clinical considerations when patients choose these options? Par...
Dec 30, 2024•19 min
Dr Robert-Jan de Vos, sports physician and associate professor at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, dives deep into all things Achilles tendinopathy. As lead author of the Dutch Multidisciplinary Guideline on Achilles Tendinopathy (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34187784/), he shares the key messages from this in-depth review. In today’s episode, Dr de Vos covers the important tendon anatomy to guide your differential diagnosis, what information he is most focused on communi...
Dec 23, 2024•21 min
When patients improve following treatment, how much can be attributed to the intervention delivered, and how much is due to contextual factors and nonspecific effects that lie outside of the clinician's control? Dr. Giacomo Rossettini joins the podcast again as a co-author of a paper (link below) that answers that very question. Dr. Rossettini and his research colleagues tried to quantify the effect of contextual factors with a meta-analysis. They found non-specific effects play a big role in pa...
Dec 16, 2024•21 min
Musicians and athletes might sometimes appear to exist in very different cultures. And yet, the single-minded focus, thousands of hours of practice, and high training loads on their musculoskeletal systems mean that musicians and athletes probably have more in common than they have differences. At least from a musculoskeletal rehabilitation perspective. Today's guest is Marianne Roos - a former clarinetist and forever musician-at-heart, who now practices as a physiotherapist and conducts her PhD...
Dec 09, 2024•23 min
When it comes to serious injury, like an ACL tear, in college sport, how many young athletes return to their previous level of performance? Today's guest led a team that has done the hard yards of synthesising all the available data to find an answer. Dr Cortez Brown is a junior orthopaedic surgery resident at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre. In today's episode, Dr Brown shares the results of his systematic review, and guides listeners through the complex factors that affect return t...
Dec 04, 2024•22 min
Ballooning wait times, overworked and burnt out staff. No doubt you're only too familiar with the signs of a health system that's under serious strain. And not just since the Covid-19 pandemic. Simon Lafrance, physiotherapist and researcher from the University of Montreal, explains musculoskeletal care models that flip the traditional medical model of the doctor as the first contact point a patient has with the health system, to a musculoskeletal specialist, like a physical therapist, leading in...
Nov 25, 2024•25 min
Musculoskeletal rehabilitation clinicians are well versed in the physical and mental benefits of regular physical activity. Unfortunately there is limited evidence to guide clinicians on how to best support return to sport and physical activity after childbirth. That's where today's guest comes in. Dr Jenna Schulz (physiotherapist and postdoctoral researcher from Western University, Canada) specializes in pelvic health and sport, women’s health, and improving longevity in sport for females acros...
Nov 18, 2024•27 min
Most people who pursue a career in health care do so because they want to help people. Depending on where you work, patients might find it easier or harder to access high-value musculoskeletal care, and you might run into barriers to providing the care you would like to provide. Dr Roy Film is a physical therapist, educator and current President of APTA Maryland. In today's episode, Roy explains his work trying to make it easier for people to choose high-value musculoskeletal rehabilitation. ---...
Nov 11, 2024•21 min
The complex world of clinical practice in musculoskeletal rehabilitation brings many challenges. Some you might feel prepared for, while others...not so much. Musculoskeletal physiotherapist and shoulder specialist, Jared Powell, is here to reassure us that no-one expects you to have all the answers, encourage us all to think carefully and critically when evaluating information, and to embrace a work-related niche that resonates with your passions and strengths. Jared shares ideas on how to succ...
Oct 28, 2024•25 min
Today brings a refresher on best practice in managing non-traumatic shoulder pain. Professor Karen McCreesh (University of Limerick) guides the listener to the best available clinical practice guidelines and runs the ruler over different approaches to exercise therapy. ------------------------------ RESOURCES Diagnosing, managing and supporting return to work for people with rotator cuff disorders (practice guideline): https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2022.11306 Efficacy of exercise thera...
Oct 21, 2024•26 min
If you consult a clinical practice guideline for any musculoskeletal condition, you'll probably see advice and education included as part of the recommendations for helping someone manage their musculoskeletal pain. How well do the recommendations in clinical practice guidelines about what topics advice and education should cover align with the main concerns of people with back pain? Dr Giovanni Ferreira (University of Sydney) joins JOSPT Insights to explain. ------------------------------ RESOU...
Oct 14, 2024•24 min
