Cancer rehabilitation is about much more than restoring movement after surgery. Physiotherapist Subhash Narangoda uses exercise, pain management and lifestyle strategies to help people regain confidence, physical capacity and quality of life.

When Madolyn Ryan discovered she was pregnant, she had no idea that the appointment would also mark the beginning of a cancer journey.

Exercise is increasingly recognised as an essential component of cancer care but translating evidence into an appropriately dosed, individualised intervention remains a challenge. Physiotherapist Kylie Moffitt has spent the past decade developing a model of care that places exercise, rehabilitation and the therapeutic relationship at the centre of the cancer journey.

For cancer patients, adding exercise into their lives at a time when they are dealing with a cancer diagnosis and the whirlwind of surgery, treatments and management that follows might seem one step too far. The evidence, however, is mounting in favour of exercise as a critical component of cancer therapy.

When Benjamin Gold’s wife Nicole Iglicki was diagnosed with breast cancer just before the COVID-19 pandemic, their lives became dominated by hospitals, surgery and chemotherapy. Nicole’s having to travel to care when she was feeling low sparked an idea for Benjamin: what if cancer rehabilitation and allied healthcare could come to the patient?

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.