Reducing low-value care for low back pain remains one of the biggest challenges facing hospital emergency departments. A team of researchers including physiotherapist Associate Professor Adrian Traeger is offering important insights into why changing clinician and patient behaviour is more complex than it first appears.

The recent launch of the updated Stroke Clinical Care Standard, coupled with the Stroke Foundation’s Living Clinical Guidelines for Stroke Management, provides Australian physiotherapists with a comprehensive, evidence-based framework for best practice care. Here, the two sets of recommendations are examined to understand how they work together and what physiotherapists should know about them.

For more than two decades, Professor Michele Sterling has been at the forefront of pain research, reshaping how physiotherapists understand musculoskeletal injury, chronic pain and recovery after whiplash injury. Michele was recently named in The Australian’s top 250 researchers of 2026 and is the leading researcher in the area of pain and pain management. 

At the APA Victorian Branch Winter Breakfast on 24 July, keynote speaker Professor Catherine Granger will explore the growing role of prehabilitation in major cancer surgery.