Professor Trudy Rebbeck FACP’s career has spanned continents, combined academic and clinical excellence, influenced international standards and advanced care for complex musculoskeletal conditions. 

What motivated you to investigate non-drug, non-exercise interventions for breathlessness in people with chronic lung disease? 

Breathlessness is a distressing and debilitating symptom for people with chronic lung disease. 

Why does adolescent idiopathic scoliosis matter—not just clinically but also in terms of long-term health and wellbeing for young people? 

What motivated you to test supervised exercise and pelvic floor muscle training as part of pain management for people with endometriosis? 

Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common causes of disability and is associated with a number of comorbid conditions such as excess weight, physical inactivity, poor diet and smoking. 

Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of research investigating how to prevent and treat LBP, particularly through combating comorbid conditions.

What are some of the key challenges in delivering rehabilitation for people with HCA? 

Delivering effective rehabilitation for people with hereditary cerebellar ataxia (HCA) is particularly challenging due to several factors. 

What are some of the challenges that physiotherapists face working with elite para-athletes? 

As physiotherapists we are often encouraged to use pattern recognition and evidence-based practice as the basis of our assessments, diagnosis and clinical reasoning. 

With para-athletes, no two impairments are the same and the impact of the impairment differs for individual athletes. 

What are common misconceptions about using acupuncture and dry needling for pain? 

Acupuncture and dry needling are often confused, but they differ in purpose and philosophy. 

In 2009, physiotherapy researcher Professor Paul Hodges published an editorial in the Journal of Physiotherapy, ‘Growth of physiotherapy research funding in Australia’, looking at funding from 2000 to 2008 (Hodges 2009). 

The Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) is a trusted global resource that gives physiotherapists support to implement evidence-based practice. 

Indexing more than 66,000 articles, PEDro focuses on evidence that can be directly applied in practice— evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials.