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APA has partnered with ASCA to provide the Level 1 ASCA Strength and Conditioning Coaching Course, specifically adapted for sports physiotherapists. The ASCA coaching programs are registered with the National Coach Accreditation Scheme (NCAS), which is administered by the Australian Sports Commission and is recognised as an industry leader via international affiliates across the globe. The course provides participants with the knowledge and skills to understand, apply and design programs including basic training principles and variables to physically prepare beginner level athletes to improve their sports performance. This adapted course will be conducted over one full day and is only available to SPA members. Participants must attend the full 1 day course, and required further practical supervision post-course (30 hours) with an ASCA coach, to gain accreditation.

Register online www.strengthandconditioning.org or email info@strengthandconditioning.org

This face-to-face course has been designed to provide an opportunity for physiotherapists to develop their practical skills and clinical reasoning associated with content taught in the online Level 1 Women's Health Through the Life Stages Course.

The course will include practical skill development in musculoskeletal assessments across the childbearing year (including SIJ provocation tests), provision of education classes across the childbearing year, early postnatal assessment and advice, and group exercise prescription across the female lifespan (female adolescence, pregnancy, early postpartum and post-menopausal bone health).

In addition, the course will provide an opportunity to explore clinical case studies to enhance clinical reasoning across all topics.

Presented by the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) and Women's Health Training Associates (WHTA).

For more information about the Women's Level 1 courses please click here.

Most shoulders seen in physio practice are ‘everyday' shoulders. They are not elite swimmers or tennis players with exotic overuse syndromes and an enthusiasm for exercise. Instead they are manual workers, mums, recreational athletes, tradies, office workers and others with little time or energy to invest in their recovery. They are seeking a physiotherapist who can identify their problem, plot an effective path to recovery and support their goals.

The Everyday Shoulder brings a pathokinematic approach to improve movement and strength to support shoulder pathology recovery. The everyday shoulder in practice is typically weak, stiff or tight and painful. It demonstrates mixed pathology with elements of impingement, bursitis, cuff degeneration, cervico-thoracic dysfunction, scapular dyskinesia and age.

Participants will learn assessment and treatment skills for a range of shoulder dysfunctions including scapular control, glenohumeral stiffness, frozen shoulder, impingement, laxity, post-surgical and just plain getting old and weak.

Disability Physiotherapy Level 1 aims to provide physiotherapists with the knowledge, understanding and skills to provide high quality physiotherapy services to people with a range of disabilities. In doing so, the course introduces models of practice consistent with best practice in the disability field, and highlights both commonalities and differences with other areas of physiotherapy practice. It also covers issues relating to the funding landscape within the disability sector, with a focus on the NDIS, and applies this knowledge to practice.

Disability Physiotherapy Level 1 is delivered through a blended learning model comprising three parts:

Part A: is the first component of the Disability Physiotherapy Level 1 course and consists of seven OnDemand, self-paced modules
Part B: live virtual classroom is very interactive and will include lively discussions between learners and expert presenters, with the opportunity to ask questions along the way
Part C: is practical face-to-face classroom learning

This live virtual session is Part B of the Disability Physiotherapy Level 1 course. You must attend a live virtual session in order to complete the Disability Physiotherapy Level 1 course.

Join us for an evening with a special guest as they share with us their Journey through Sports Physiotherapy.

Learn from the reflections and experiences of a successful physiotherapist who has worked with elite level athletes.

Our guest will be asked questions by the APA Student Committee team regarding student life, current work/lifestyle and advice for current students curious about sports and high performance.

Following these questions, the floor will be open for all students in attendance to ask their own questions.

Please note: This is a face-to-face event. It will not be livestreamed or recorded.

In Australia, 400 people of all ages die of a terminal illness daily. Every one of them could benefit from palliative care – care that is their human right, care that can enrich their final days, and care that too many people still miss out on. Pain is one of the most common and much feared symptoms in palliative care. For National Palliative Care Week 2025, we welcome palliative medicine specialist, Dr Yok-Yin Lee (MBBS, FACHPM, FAMAC) to present on pain assessment and management in palliative care with a focus on non-pharmacological strategies; what is acupuncture and integrating acupuncture into symptom management.

The AGM is an important forum for the APA and provides an opportunity for members to receive an update of the Association's performance and to celebrate some of the achievements for the previous year.

At the meeting, members will be asked to:

• Accept the minutes of the last AGM

• Accept the Financial Statements for 2024, including the Directors report and the independent auditors report.

If you wish to attend this event online, please register before 5pm 16th May 2025.

Details of the Agenda and Financial Statements will be available on the APA Website from the 30 April 2025

Vestibular rehabilitation has evolved as a specialist area of clinical practice in rehabilitation as our understanding and awareness of the debilitating sequelae of dizziness and vestibular impairments increases.This course aims to provide an overview of vestibular anatomy and introduce clinicians to the assessment and treatment of individuals with vestibular dysfunction resulting in activity limitations and participation restrictions.

**This event is now full. To register your interest and to be added to a wait list please contact: vic.pd@australian.physio

This course will explore the theoretical and practical sides of managing sporting injuries with an emphasis on current research. Presented topics include shoulder, ankle and knee injuries with focus specifically on ligament, tendon and muscle. Participants will also gain information on acute onfield management and travelling with a sports team, as well as a large practical component on taping techniques.

This course is designed for those who are commencing work in or returning to work in neurological physiotherapy or recent graduates who would like to consolidate their knowledge about neurological physiotherapy. The online modules cover; the principles of neuroplasticity, motor learning and task and context specific practice, the relative contributions of impairments to activity limitations after stroke and a clinical reasoning approach that applies this knowledge to the analysis of movement problems and intervention planning, and principles for maximising engagement in and amounts of practice in rehabilitation. The face-to-face content covers the tasks of bed mobility, sitting, sit to stand, standing, walking and arm function. For each of these activities, video case studies are used to guide discussions of movement analysis and relevant outcome measures and evidence-based intervention, practical sessions will be used to enforce the principles of effective set-up of training for these tasks.

This course aims to help physiotherapists augment and consolidate their competence across the key areas of differential diagnosis and evidence-informed management of people with low back pain. This aligns with 'Deliberate Practice' - the process of embracing opportunity to grow in professional skill and knowledge. Clinical Reasoning is underpinned by Clinical Anatomy and, together with selected Clinical Examination tests, is used by physiotherapists in clinical decision-making about treatment or management strategies for low back pain.

Neurological Examination of patients can be challenging due to wide variability in clinical presentation, therefore this aspect of Clinical Examination receives focused attention in this course. Accuracy around neurological findings is imperative to identify deficits to which treatment can be directed, to differentiate neuropathic, nociceptive or nociplastic pain, for reports to doctors and to step up care to meet the Australian Clinical Care Standards for low back pain. Therapeutic exercise is a key tool in the challenge to help patients embrace self-efficacy strategies that can reduce their pain and improve their quality of life, therefore this course includes an Exercise Workshop session informed by research and clinical reasoning.

To facilitate contextual learning a detailed case presentation is used in the final session. This allows for integration of the day's learning and to comprehensively pull together evidence-informed aspects of patient management. This includes: diagnosis, appraisal of evidence, radiology, pain science education, strategic sign- and symptom-based treatment, self-management strategies, selecting and teaching exercises, habit stacking, documenting change and reporting to healthcare colleagues.

This course is designed to improve your existing knowledge and skills developed from the Paediatric Level 1 course and/or established during your own clinical practice. The Paediatric Level 2 course offers an opportunity to refine your clinical reasoning skills from infancy to adolescence and apply these to skills to numerous paediatric conditions.

Using a case-based approach, you will learn about many different assessment tools and their applicability to age, conditions and settings. Intervention approaches will also be taught alongside decision making regarding applicability to the goals and needs of a paediatric patient and their family. The Paediatric Level 2 course also includes principles of health promotion, sporting performance and musculoskeletal assessment and management.

The Tasmanian Branch extends a warm invitation to APA members and colleagues to attend the 2025 Annual Symposium.

We are excited to announce our keynote speaker for this year's Symposium – Dr Merv Travers APAM.

Merv will present 'Merging pain science and exercise rehabilitation: implications for clinical practice'.

Unfortunately, exercise rehabilitation produces only modest results for many people living with pain. A challenge to optimising exercise rehabilitation is that our frameworks for researching and applying exercise rehabilitation in clinical practice do not align with a contemporary understanding of pain. Our current view of conscious experiences like taste, smell and even pain suggests they are shaped by the interaction of top-down predictions and incoming sensory evidence.

Using a series of audio-visual experiments, Merv will lead the audience on a journey to understand the role of both predictions and sensory information in our conscious experiences like pain. Central to this idea is the notion that how we move shapes our sensory information and the subsequent conscious experience of pain.

Based on these concepts, Merv will discuss the evidence underpinning a framework for exercise rehabilitation for people with persisting pain and illustrate it in action through case-study examples.

In addition to our keynote, the Symposium will feature local invited speakers who will share their knowledge and latest insights across a range of topics that will provide valuable perspectives.

Other confirmed speakers:

- Harrison Shaw-Gillott, High Performance Manager - Strength & Conditioning, Tasmania JackJumpers

More presenters TBC.

An overview of the recent changes to the NDIS legislation, including rules around eligibility, 'reasonable and 'necessary' supports, the Quality and Safeguard Commission and other relevant issues for practitioners.

Live online lecture:
This is a live webinar. Login instructions including link details will be sent to registrants the day before the event. If login instructions are not received (please check your inbox as well as junk/spam folders) by close of business the day before the lecture, please contact us on lizzie.vilmanis@australian.physio

An evening considering the evolving role of the Sport and Exercise Physiotherapist in the recognition and management of concussion. A review of where we've come from, the state of play in 2025, the latest research and some practical considerations for managing simple and complex concussion cases.

Course Times: Wednesday 28th May 2025 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM, Thursday 29th May 2025 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Friday 30th May 2025 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM

This course has been designed to provide an opportunity for physiotherapists to develop their practical skills and clinical reasoning associated with content taught in the online Level 2 Women's Pelvic Health Part A course.

This practical course is structured around a ‘clinical case studies' format. Physiotherapists will be guided through a number of case studies involving role play of the initial pelvic health patient interview, brainstorming differential diagnoses, choosing appropriate objective assessments to carry out, interpretation of assessment results (including sensation related bladder diary, vaginal / digital rectal examination results and reports from multidisciplinary health providers), and developing an appropriate treatment plan.

In addition, physiotherapists will have the opportunity to learn the necessary procedures (including infection control, obtaining informed consent and practical skills) required to perform internal vaginal examination and digital rectal examination for the purpose of pelvic floor assessment, as well as Transcutaneous Tibial Nerve Stimulation (TTNS) for the management of OAB.

For information regarding the vaginal and rectal examinations, please click here

Join us for this exclusive webinar hosted by renowned physiotherapist Ben Day, tailored for allied health professionals seeking to enhance their approach to tendinopathy treatment.

Uncover the science behind Shockwave Therapy, unravelling its role in tissue repair, pain reduction in chronic musculoskeletal pathologies.

Witness real-life case studies where Shockwave therapy has proved a valuable adjunct to gold standard physiotherapy care.

In this practical and interactive course, Michael will demonstrate functional assessment tasks and exercises that can be used to accurately identify and develop an appropriate intervention.

Accurate assessment and effective functional strengthening of the lower limb kinetic chain (LLKC) is vital in ensuring an adequate recovery from common hip, knee and ankle pathology. Exercises that can be taught and performed in the clinic and home with minimal equipment, enables all clients to achieve the desired result from their exercise program.

Exercise intervention needs to be able to isolate, adequately activate and strengthen the appropriate muscles to achieve the desired result for your client. A lunge or squat does not always achieve the activation you expect and your ineffectiveness will delay your clients' recovery.

Drawing from the latest evidence based research, participants will learn and experience how to activate the primary muscles required for lower limb pathology rehabilitation.

Utilising this knowledge, the group will also assess a patient in the session and develop an effective exercise intervention to address their dysfunction.

You can expect to learn how to adequately assess clients and identify pathology and dysfunctional movement patterns contributing to their presentation and intervene accordingly to address their deficits.

* This course was previously know as Screening and Conditioning for Dancers.

During adolescence, developing dancers undergo significant change in the volume, intensity and styles of dance training they undertake, especially if undertaking pre-professional training. Research highlights a sharp increase in the incidence of injuries at the onset and during pubertal development. Additionally, there is a high incidence of injury among both adolescent and professional ballet dancers with a prevalence of these injuries occurring in the lower extremity and spine. In some instances more than half the injuries sustained by pre-professional dancers are recurrent and retired professional dancers continue to experience muscle and joint pain.

This course will help physiotherapists who are managing dancers and their injuries, to gain an understanding of dance specific measures in order to ensure appropriate management of a dancer's complaint. An understanding of the relationship between range of motion and anatomical anomalies as risk factors for injury development, being able to identify variations in knee and pelvic angles in fondu and temps levés to help address injury concerns and identifying appropriate testing for inclusion in prepointe assessments that may give a better indication of pointe readiness are all essential skills for physiotherapists who wish to work with dancers. An appropriate exercise prescription is a vital link between assessment findings, injury management, return to class and injury prevention. It is the aim of this course to help physiotherapists develop these skills

The Australian Ballet, in collaboration with the National Eating Disorders Collaboration (NEDC), has designed and implemented their body image and disordered eating guidelines for the prevention & management of body image issues, disordered eating & eating disorders. These health issues are common in dance and other aesthetic sports and can lead to serious health concerns and can impact performance. The guidelines are very practical and can be applied to other cohorts other than ballet companies.