JOSPT Insights

We're often asking or answering the question "why?" in clinical practice. Why does it hurt? Why does this treatment give me relief? Why is the problem not getting better? Sometimes it's easy to answer why, and sometimes it's not.In today's episode, Dr Damian Keter (US Department of Veterans Affairs) explores and explains musculoskeletal treatment mechanisms. Dr Keter suggests some ways to approach...

Returning to sport after an ACL injury is often framed around a single construct: fear of reinjury. But what if fear doesn't tell the whole story?In today's episode, Chelsea and Marquis speak with Cobie Starcevich about her team's qualitative evidence synthesis exploring how athletes experience and interpret reinjury concerns after ACL injury.The team's findings suggest that what clinicians common...

A patient might ask the clinician: "How long will it take me to get back to sport?" or "How long until I'm feeling back to myself again?". These questions ask the clinician to make a prognosis - to predict the future. Often we rely on our clinical experience or intuition to answer with a prognosis. Sometimes we might know some prognostic factors, which can give us some big-picture ideas, but they'...

Today we're talking about one very important milestone in rehabilitation after an ACL reconstruction: return to running. It's a milestone that sometimes gets overshadowed by its more flamboyant sibling, return to sport. Brendan Butler joins JOSPT Insights to explore best practice in return to running. Brendan an Irish sports physiotherapist, who is currently working at the Aspetar Orthopaedic & Sp...

All the data point to a growing burden of chronic musculoskeletal pain for populations around the world. Clearly, there is a need to innovate in the way that musculoskeletal care is delivered. In today's episode, Dr Luc Hébert shares his wealth of experience in musculoskeletal rehabilitation care - as a clinician and as a researcher leading clinical trials of different care models. We explore new...

There are many outstanding leaders in the sports medicine and musculoskeletal rehabilitation world. How did they get there? What decisions did they make that have got them to where they are today? In today's episode, Dr Amber Donaldson shares what she is looking for in the next generation of sports medicine leaders, how she has approached developing her own career, and her advice for early-career...

How often do you think about the air quality in the clinic or outside when you're exercising? Perhaps you live and work in a part of the world where you're fortunate to have good air quality most of the time. For many people though, that's not the case. Air pollution from wildfires in increasing, and it has serious implications for everyone's health. Today, Dr Débora Petry Moecke (Centre for Heart...

Today, Dr Federico Pozzi (University of Florida), walks Dan and Marquis through his recent paper titled “Addressing Shoulder Weakness in Individuals With Rotator Cuff–Related Shoulder Pain: A Systematic Review With Meta-analysis” In this discussion, Dr Pozzi, Dan & Marquis look at the research regarding rotator cuff-related shoulder pain, asking the question: what type of strengthening interventio...

Rugby is seeing consistent growth in popularity and participation. It's also no secret that women's sport is also growing rapidly. Put those together and you enter the exciting and rapidly developing area of women's and girl's rugby. Today, Dr Isla Shill (University of Victoria) discusses her research work in preventing injuries (including concussion) in girl's rugby. She shares the key components...

Today’s guest—Dr Thomas Ibounig—who led the paper, “Rotator Cuff Imaging Abnormalities in Asymptomatic Shoulders: A systematic review” explores how prevalent abnormal MRI findings are in asymptomatic shoulders, and how the prevalence changes by population. The systematic review is an exemplar of what musculoskeletal rehabilitation clinicians can learn from accepting what we don’t know! Chelsea and...

Psychological factors can be prominent for people with tendinopathy–so how do you pick up on them? How might psychological factors guide your plan of care? Today, physiotherapist Jack Mest (University of Canberra), is your guide to understanding how best to screen for important psychological factors, and how to address them in the clinic. Jack Mest is a PhD candidate, studying psychological factor...

The Covid pandemic was an inflection point for many aspects of health care, including turbocharging uptake of virtual models of care. Telerehabilitation was around before Covid, of course, but the past few years has seen it in a far more prominent place in health care systems. There's also increasing research evaluating different telerehabilitation interventions. Dr Bruno Saragiotto (University of...

In episode 258, Drs Ruth Chang and JP Caneiro explain the results of trials testing cognitive functional therapy (CFT). They explored what CFT is and how it might help people in pain. In today's episode, Dr Caneiro (Curtin University; Evoolve Pain Care Academy) joins the JOSPT Insights community again to explain what is involved in learning the patient-centred CFT approach. -----------------------...

All clinicians know the challenge and opportunity that comes with tailoring clinical decisions to the person in front of you. While it's helpful to have clinical practice guidelines to give you a starting point and to reduce unwarranted variation in practice, of course every patient is different! Today, Dr Trevor Lentz (Duke University) explains the concept of clinical phenotyping, which is anothe...

Last week we explored how people with pain move. Drs Ruth Chang and JP Caneiro explained cognitive functional therapy, or CFT, as an approach to helping people in pain explore their beliefs with curiosity. Today, we take the discussion further, exploring what CFT could do for your practice. Dr Chang is a postdoctoral research fellow at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and a specialist muscul...

If cognitive functional therapy hasn't been on your radar, it's likely only a matter of time. There's an increasing number of trials studying the effects of cognitive functional therapy. In a network meta-analysis published in January 2026 in JOSPT, the authors found that cognitive functional therapy topped a list of 27 different interventions for reducing disability in people with chronic non-spe...

Manual therapy is one of those topics that seems to quickly descend to polarised debates in musculoskeletal rehabilitation. Today, we're talking about what manual therapy looks like and does in the 2020s. Dr Jodi Young explains the mechanisms of manual therapy, the typical effects and why you might think about adding manual therapy as another tool in your physical therapy toolkit. Dr Young is the...

After Lindsey Vonn's sad early exit due to injury from the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, it feels like an apt time to revisit the latest consensus on managing knee injury, and supporting return to sport after complex meniscus injury and surgery. Today, we continue the conversation on the latest consensus for managing acute and degenerative meniscus tears. We jump into non-surgical treatment...

Trust is integral to the therapeutic relationship between patients and clinicians in musculoskeletal rehabilitation. But does that trust go both ways? If you do a deep dive into the literature on trust, you'll find that it almost always talks about whether patients trust clinicians, not if clinicians trust patients. There's also an inherent bias built into the biomedical environment where so calle...

Need a refresher on youth sport-related concussion? Today's episode is a rapid review of the epidemiology and best practice for managing youth concussion. Lisbeth Lund Pedersen (University of Southern Denmark & Danish Society for Sports Physiotherapy) shares the results of the HAAPY study, which involved more than 900 young Danish handball players prospectively recording handball exposure and inju...

The updated clinical practice guideline for managing hip osteoarthritis landed in late 2025. Today, Dan and Marquis speak with lead author Dr Thomas Koc Jr. to highlight what's new, what's changed and what’s currently considered best practice for hip osteoarthritis. Dr Koc shares the upgraded evidence for dry needling, downgraded evidence for ultrasound, and everything in between. ----------------...

Sleep: we all know it's essential for function in everyday life, and plays an important role in recovery and managing musculoskeletal pain. How much did you learn about assessing and managing sleep dysfunction in your musculoskeletal degree program? Today, Dr Mark Shepherd (Bellin College) shares practical tips to help you assess sleep, identify common sleep disorders, and incorporate behavioural...

The JOSPT Insights team has been on a hiatus in December. We're very pleased to say we're back and recording new episodes to share with you in 2026. We're back in your feed with new episodes from mid-January. Until then, we're sharing a couple of our most impactful episodes of 2025. Enjoy! ------------------------------ Patellofemoral pain can affect anyone at any age, which mean you're likely to...

The JOSPT Insights team has been on a hiatus in December. We're very pleased to say we're back and recording new episodes to share with you in 2026. We're back in your feed with new episodes from mid-January. Until then, we're sharing a couple of our most impactful episodes of 2025. Enjoy! ------------------------------ Tune in today for the latest consensus on rehabilitation approaches for people...

Calf strains are challenging for athletes and clinicians to manage—with uncertain return to play times and risks for reinjury if they're not managed well. Dr Brady Green (University of Notre Dame, Perth, Australia) shares his research and clinical expertise on muscle strains in elite and subelite athletes, including from his previous work in elite Australian football at the Essendon Football Club....