Tell us a bit about ‘The essential private practice clinical reasoning road map: a graduate’s guide’. What areas of practice does the series focus on?

I have found, over the years of employing new graduates and early career physios, that they are incredibly intelligent, but often struggle to turn all the knowledge they have worked so hard to gain at university into a coherent treatment approach.

My goal with this course was to provide a framework that physios could follow that would help them feel confident about the most common challenging conditions that present in private practice in the spine, ribs, pelvis, sacroiliac joint and hip.

The reason I put this program together is that young graduates are generally high achievers.

They are perfectionists and they really want to tick all the boxes and deliver the best care for their patients.

But they get bombarded with so much information that’s not in a framework and they can risk becoming paralysed by knowledge.

This program offers a logical framework that can be built upon—I call it a scaffold for treatment.

And when you have a scaffold, you can build a skyscraper on it, so long as those foundations are strong.

That’s what I wanted to offer—some really strong foundations and strong roots so physios can grow their skills as big and as high as they want.

Who would benefit most from attending this course?

New graduate and early career physios who are looking to develop instantly applicable skills for private practice in anatomy, kinematics, biomechanics, exercise interventions and hands-on treatment techniques would benefit most.

It is ideal for physios—new grads and those up to five years out—who are feeling a bit swamped and overwhelmed with knowledge, particularly if they are struggling to build effective and efficient assessment and treatment protocols.

This program is about getting back to the basic principles and then they can build from there.

Which skills do you consider most important for graduates to develop and how will this course help?

The human connection is what gets most of us into physio and it is why a lot of patients come back.

But what I have found is that when early career physios are stressed and are struggling to figure out what to do, they start to lose the ability to connect with the patient in front of them.

The framework taught in this course is there to help give physios a specific and logical action plan so they can spend less time stressing and more time connecting with their patients.

It makes for a much more enjoyable career.

Trish Wisbey-Roth's course helps graduates translate knowledge into a coherent framework for clinical practice. 

There is a focus on the differential diagnostic skills and listening to the story from the patient.

From that story, the physio can choose key differential diagnostic tests and treatment strategies that will be really important to start with.

If you can focus on what’s important and get buy-in from the patient in those first two to four weeks, then you’re on the journey together.

What that looks like depends on where the patient wants to go in their recovery.

If you’re on that path together and you’re confident in each other by the end of the first four weeks, then it all depends on the goals of the patient.

What can participants expect to take away and apply to private practice?

A treatment framework, some very practical, actionable assessment and treatment skills and a sense of confidence that they can deal compassionately with whoever comes through the practice doors.

I have created the program in such a way that for the lumbar spine, the pelvis, the hip, the thoracic or the cervical spine, if you’ve spent your time and written down your own notes and practised the techniques, you will have clear strategies for what to assess, what treatment direction that sends you in, what strategies to use in the first four weeks and how to start your exercise program and progress it.

And then from that you can look at the areas that you’d like to expand into and the information you’d like to incorporate.

It’s about pulling all the area-specific initial assessment information together into a digestible format that can be transferred to the busy private practice setting to build the physio’s confidence and give direction for treatment and rehab.

‘The essential private practice clinical reasoning road map: a graduate’s guide’ course by Trish Wisbey-Roth is a five-part online series (seven hours of learning in total). Click here for more information and to register. 

>> Trish Wisbey-Roth, FACP, is a Sydney-based clinical physiotherapist with a postgraduate sports physiotherapy master’s qualification. Trish is a Specialist Sports and Exercise Physiotherapist (as awarded by the Australian College of Physiotherapists in 2009) and she has been involved with Australian sporting teams at national, world championship and Olympic level. She lectures in conjunction with the APA and internationally in the areas of differential diagnosis, manual treatment and exercise prescription. She is the director of spinal and sport rehabilitation centre Take Control Active Rehab.