The New Grad Physio Podcast

Want to know how to better assess, treat and rehab patients with lower back pain? Then this week's podcast episode is for you! Learn some simple strategies to help you make sense of lower back pain problems... Even the more complex ones... And have the confidence to know what treatments and rehab exercises your patients needs... Even as a young physio that has limited experience seeing patients wi...

You do the shoulder tests, like you range of movement and resisted tests an you think you have a fair idea what is going on... But you are just not sure. Wouldn't it be great if the special tests you can use at the shoulder were actually useful... To help you rule in and rule out different pathologies and help you correctly diagnose the right shoulder problem? The problem is, the special tests at...

Poor communication can completely undo all your hard work you have done with your patient. Even if you nail your diagnosis... And in your head you how exactly what your patient's treatment plan is going to look like... If you cannot get this information across to your patient then this does not matter and it can be a recipe for disaster. If your patient does not have a good understanding of their...

You know how important your red flag questions are... But what do you actually do when a patient answers 'YES' to one of those questions? Beyond the most obvious, like a lower back pain patient with cauda equina symptoms or unexplained calf pain following a long haul flight (DVT)... 9/10 patients with red flags do NOT need an urgent onward referral to A&E! There is so much mixed evidence out t...

A subjective assessment done poorly leaves you a lot to do… And puts big pressure on you and your objective assessment to find out what is going wrong and to identify the right patient problems to focus on. Why would you make like harder for yourself when you do not have to? In this week's podcast you will discover 3 critical mistakes commonly made by new grad physio’s that result in a poor subjec...

You want to be the best physio you can be, right? And you know that keeping on top of your learning via CPD is pivotal to help you do this… To stay up to date with the evidence… And sharpen your skills to better assess, treat and rehab the patients you work with. But to be able to do this, you need to make sure that the time and effort you put into your learning, actually helps. You can read as ma...

I’d like to think I have ended the year as a better physio than when I started 2022, as we all did, right? I have had some great experiences this year in both sport and private practice... And whilst there have been some relative successes... There have been equally as many mistakes and new learnings that I hope will make me better at what I do. So for the last podcast of the year, what better way...

You already know that objective assessments are very important as they help you check how your patient is progressing... And help guide the rehab process. You might think then, that completing more testing is therefore better.... But this is not the case! Too much testing, the wrong type of testing or testing at the wrong time in the rehab process can be a complete waste of time... And worse than...

Not every shoulder pain patient needs rotator cuff exercises! You already know this right, because you have no doubt seen patients where these type of exercises did not help. They might have even flared up your patients symptoms! So why are you still using them? Probably because that's what you were told to do at University, right? You have a patient with shoulder pain... You give them some 'rotat...

Do you rush to get your patient on the bed... Eager to assess their knee, ankle or hip pain? STOP! By doing this you are missing some really simple yet vital information. Using simple movement testing you can observe how your patient is moving... And you can identify any compensations they may have developed as a result of their injury. These results can not only help you to correctly find the rig...

Remember being told at University that the aim of your subjective assessment was to identify a hypothesis... Then test out this hypothesis using your objective assessment? Sounds simple in theory... But not quite as simple in real life right!!! You already know this. Every patient is different and that is why it is not as easy as just doing x, y or z, like the textbooks and your Universi...

Super exciting news to share with you… Registration has just opened for my final events of 2022... Lower Limb Course [Online] - Wednesday 30th November 2022 Upper Limb Course [Online] - Wednesday 7th December 2022 Both courses will run in the evening (18:00-21:00) and every attendee gets a CPD certificate for attending. I have cut all the fluff that you get on a full day course and we get str...

Many therapists struggle with ankle syndesmosis injuries... Often incorrectly diagnosing them as lateral ankle injuries, like an ATFL or CFL injury, but this is a BIG issue... As they need to be managed very differently! This area of the ankle is often glossed over at Uni so it is no great surprise you might struggle to differentiate syndesmosis injuries to other lateral ankle injuries. The ankle...

Do you sometimes get your head in a spin when assessing patients with neck pain? I used to be the same as a new grad. Any patient with neural symptoms, pins and needles or weakness... I used to worry(alot). I'd worry that I might might them worse… And struggle to make the call whether they were safe to treat... Or whether or not I needed to refer them on to A&E. Sound like you? What I have lea...

Do you worry that you might miss something when you are treating patients with neck pain? Many therapists do, both news grads and experienced therapists... But this is not great as it affects your ability to clinically reason... And in turn help your patient out of pain and back to full fitness. So many therapists have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to treating neck pain... Which often l...

‘Why didn’t they teach us this at Uni?’ This was a question I got asked by a therapist on a course I was teaching on just last week. He was talking about how University had missed the bit about how to properly design and implement a rehab plan for a patient. University teaching typically teaches you a very basic way to assess, treat and rehab your patients... In the textbook way. But if you have e...

Picking the right exercise in hamstring injury rehab can be tough. How do you know what exercise is best? Is it a romanian deadlift, some form of hamstring bridge, a slider.... Maybe it's nordics? It must be nordics, right, because everyone is using them? Improvements in hamstring strength link to reductions in hamstring injuries, that is clear from the current evidence base. You increase the capa...

Why is it that some hands-on treatment techniques work really well with your knee pain patients... Yet the same techniques do nothing for other patients with almost identical symptoms? In short, if your techniques are not working, you are probably treating the wrong thing... Or the wrong part of the knee! To understand what you need to do differently, you need to fully understand how the knee join...

If you are a physio it seems you have to love or hate manual therapy.

 Which camp are you in?
 
I'm in neither camp, and probably sit somewhere in the middle.

 I see the value in manual therapy for SOME patients and not others...

 And use it differently with different injuries and how I use manual therapy changes as the rehab plan progresses.

 How I now use my hands-on treatments is very diffe...

Everyone forgets about the big toe! You have no doubt heard people talk about 'triple extension' in rehab... And the ability to extend the hip, knee and ankle at the same time. This combination of movements is important as this needs to happen to allow the lower limbs to move in a way to allow us to walk, run and jump. But aren't we forgetting something... So shouldn’t it be quadruple extension? W...

We all question if we might be good enough to do our jobs, at some point in our careers. I bet you have already done this yourself, especially if you are just starting out as a new grad physio. Feeling inadequate and questioning whether or not you have what it takes to do your job well and help the patients and athletes you are working with can be overbearing... Laying in bed at night and worrying...

You can do all the tests in the clinic... But is your patient really ready to go back to return to higher level activities like running or sport? Do you sometimes second guess yourself and give your patient the green light to go back to these sort of activities but deep down you are just not sure how they will go? This is a really common with new grads, but can be fixed up by asking your patient o...

Put simply, there are two specific points in rehab that therapists mess up... One is early in the rehab process... The second later on, and prior to a return to higher level activities like running. If I was a betting man (I am by the way!) I would bet that if your patient is not progressing… Or even worse, their symptoms have flared up, that it will be at one of these two specific points in...

We are back for part 2! If you missed part 1 check out it out right here. Long story short… I was reminded the other week that it was 15 years since I started my physio journey. There is a lot I have learnt along the way and a few great stories… So what I wanted to do is highlight some of the big learnings along the way… To provide you with some help and support with your own physio journey. In Pa...

This makes me feel kinda old! 15 years ago I was just about to start my physio journey, at the third attempt, and begin my studies at the University of Bradford. I was reminded of this last week on facebook, so I thought I would put together a special podcast episode. In this special episode I highlight some of my big wins, challenges and learnings as a new grad physio. There i...