Advances in back pain: diagnostic triage, exercise and pain science
Patients with back pain commonly present to physiotherapists who have a key role in managing this vexing condition in primary care. This course aims to advance physiotherapists' understanding and clinical skills in key aspects of low back pain (LBP) management.
Participants can expect to engage with clinically focused, updated and expanded LBP research translation to clinical practice. This will directly impact clinical competence to diagnose and treat LBP. Included elements are:
• Evidence-informed clinical reasoning for diagnostic triage and differential diagnosis of LBP,
• Updates re red flags as diagnostic cues for serious spinal pathology,
• Clinically focused diagnostic palpation of the lumbar spine and pelvis,
• Biomechanics and Clinical Anatomy of the lumbar spine and pelvis,
• Exercise prescription including: envelope of function, patient adherence, adaptations for structural pathology and/or hypervigilant responses to normal movement, adjusting exercises to manage ‘flares', FITT (frequency, intensity, time and type) principles, research-informed diagram- and text-illustrated exercise sheets.
Learning outcomes
- Advance/reinforce their knowledge of back pain diagnosis and clinical anatomy
- Incorporate knowledge regarding 'red flags/alerting features' as diagnostic cues that influence diagnosis of serious spine pathologies
- Perform clinically focused palpation of lumbar spine and pelvis tissues/structures and consider findings of proportionate stimulus-response relationship versus hyperalgesia or allodynia
- Prescribe research-based or clinically-reasoned exercises for a variety of patient presentations. Typically these might include: functional limitation due to LBP, identifiable muscle weaknesses affecting movement, structural pathologies associated with movement adaptation/s
- Consider modifications to and progressions of exercise depending on a presenting patient's envelope of function and patient-specific needs
Prerequisites
- This course is only available to qualified and AHPRA registered physiotherapists.
Presenters
Lynn Bardin
Dr Lynn Bardin, MACP, is a musculoskeletal physiotherapist whose clinical practice, teaching and research involvement focus on back pain and hip/knee osteoarthritis. Lynn qualified with a B.Sci. Physiotherapy degree, then further studies, a Certificate in Orthopaedic Musculoskeletal Therapy and Master of Science in Physiotherapy, at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She subsequently completed a Clinical Physiotherapy Doctorate at the University of Melbourne. Lynn consults at Superspine Clinic in Melbourne and assists with research activities at the Universities of Melbourne and South Australia. She has taught Anatomy at the University of Melbourne for the past 16 years and recently completed a 12-year clinical role at Austin Hospital. Lynn enjoys a role in education, fuelled by research and clinical experience in diagnosis, exercise prescription and pain science. Current research and clinical activities synthesise exercise prescription with pain science perspectives for chronic low back pain and knee osteoarthritis. She has championed spine rehabilitation contributing to clinical and academic education in this field in the UK, South Africa, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. An ongoing commitment to physiotherapy and academia is reflected in numerous conference presentations and peer-reviewed publications. A career-long interest and passion to link research evidence and anatomy science to the challenge of LBP diagnosis and management in primary care culminated in a highly cited narrative review ‘Diagnostic triage for low back pain: a practical approach for primary care' (Bardin et al., Medical Journal of Australia, 2017).
Event location
We've noticed you're not a physiotherapist.
Please note, if a course or event is for registered physiotherapists only, this will be indicated in the event description.
Please make sure you are attending an event that is open to everyone.
Close