Low back pain is the fifth most common reason for emergency department (ED) presentations in Australia.

Like most in the profession, Adrian Traeger APAM became a physiotherapist to help improve people’s health. He also had a keen interest in understanding when healthcare doesn’t help people—and how to stop that happening. For his research work, Adrian has been named this year’s Rising Star Award winner at the Australian Pain Society’s conference.

Team leaders Professor Paulo Ferreira and Emma Ho, whose work was recently published in the British Medical Journal, discuss how their research can inform treatment decisions for practitioners and patients.

The Australian Pain Society’s 42nd Annual Scientific Meeting in Hobart in April celebrated the Global Year for Translating Pain Knowledge to Practice. InMotion catches up with some of the country’s leading speakers and presenters at the conference’s topical sessions, workshops and plenary and concurrent sessions.

Fractured neck of femur is a common injury, with more than 25,000 older adults hospitalised each year—a figure that is expected to continue to rise. Emma Blake, Brett Baxter and Thomas Petrie from the Orthopaedics national group present five discussion points about the associated risk factors and management of these fractures.

Physiotherapist Rachel Nelligan has won a Premier’s Award for her work developing digital resources to help people with knee osteoarthritis, writes Marina Williams.

Monash University researcher Dr Luke Perraton has received a grant from the Physiotherapy Research Foundation to investigate the feasibility of a new group exercise approach to the treatment of rotator cuff-related shoulder pain. We talk to him here about the project.

Integrative acupuncture helps address the complexity of patient conditions, explains one of the presenters of this course, Paula Raymond-Yacoub.

A new questionnaire could enable clinicians to tailor the education and advice they provide to align with patients’ attitudes, which, writes Edel O’Hagan, may lead to more efficient delivery of first-line care and potentially improve patient outcomes.

Despite having physiotherapy as the cornerstone of its management, very few physiotherapists know about the various forms of inflammatory myopathies. To coincide with Myositis Awareness Month, Eve Vickerson with the Myositis Association Australia speaks with APA member Ian Cooper and Peter Williams, who lives with a form of myositis that currently has no effective treatment.