Winning the 2025 Yvonne Burns Award has been a deeply personal moment for Alicia Spittle FACP, whose decades-long contribution to paediatric physiotherapy has helped shape clinical practice, research directions and mentoring culture across Australia.

What prompted you to write this editorial and why are predatory journals such a persistent problem in physiotherapy research? 

As both an early-career academic and a practising clinician, I regularly receive unsolicited invitations from journals to submit manuscripts, often in exchange for publication fees. 

Advanced Practice (including Emergency Department) 

Best paper: Michelle Cottrell, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital 

Cardiorespiratory 

Best paper: Georgina Whish-Wilson, CQ University 

Attendees were literally spilling into the aisles at the mini keynote session about the power and potential of digital health technology. 

Speaking in the context of workforce capability, Associate Professor Mark Merolli MACP, a clinician and digital health and informatics researcher from the University of Melbourne, emphasised that digital technologies are becoming paramount to physiotherapy practice. 

‘We’ve entered into that age where technology literacy, technology skills are changing the very DNA of what it means to practise in healthcare.’ 

Kay’s career reflects the very best of Australian physiotherapy—from clinical excellence to world-leading research and an unwavering commitment to supporting women in the profession. 

Since joining the APA in 1983, Professor Kay Crossley FACP has seen the profession evolve in ways few could imagine. 

Anne, a cardiopulmonary physiotherapist whose work has shaped 40 clinical practice guidelines and who has produced more than 500 publications, spoke about the longstanding strength of the evidence for pulmonary rehabilitation and the ongoing failure to deliver it equitably.

At the October APA scientific conference in Adelaide, delegates were invited to explore what comes next for the physiotherapy profession. Through a series of key presentations, physiotherapists from across the country discovered the latest in research, technology, evidence-based practice and social change. 

Professor Trudy Rebbeck’s contribution spans nearly 40 years of musculoskeletal clinician practice, tertiary education and evidence-informed research.