Incorporating the Symptom Modification Approach into Evaluation & Treatment of the Orthopaedic Patient

Course overview

Do you ever have difficulty convincing your patients that you have correctly diagnosed the cause of their orthopaedic pain? Likewise, do you ever wonder which of the barrage of special tests that you performed actually were going to change the home exercise program or manual therapy technique that you decided to use with your patient? This course is designed to give step by step instructions on ways to improve both patient and clinician buy in that physical therapy can help reduce a patients pain. This course will review the concept of symptom modification special tests tests designed to turn a patients pain on and off and contrast them with traditional anatomically focused special tests. Step by step instructions along with video examples will show you not only how to perform these tests but more importantly how those results can lead to greater confidence that you have chosen the correct physical therapy intervention for your patient. Treatment focused evaluation techniques will be presented for the low back, neck, shoulder, and lower extremity for commonly seen orthopaedic complaints. For patients, these tests help improve buy in to do their home exercise program and for clinicians they help to specify which exercises and manual therapy techniques we should use with the patient in front of us.