Mark Laslett – Back Pain 101 – Basic Assessment & Treatment

Course Overview
For new graduate physiotherapists or those who are starting to learn management of back pain patients.
This course teaches practical hands-on assessment and management of people with LBP. Learn how to identify which patients you can manage yourself with good quality basic care and identify those patients who need more advanced knowledge/experience or referral for specialist advice or intervention.

Covered in the course:
• Red flags
• Clinical history
• Physical examination of LBP
• Simple LBP treatment

The use of video presentations, real patient video cases, plus easy to use interactive forms for clinical notes, will give you the confidence to assess and manage people with low back pain.
You also get complimentary 60-day access to Quick Q&A online questionnaire service to help you efficiently identify patients with red flags and those with a high risk of experiencing persistent pain.

Chapters
Chapter 1: The Clinical History — definition and terminology of low back pain, essential screening questionnaires for red flags and risk stratification, how to take a basic clinical history integrating the questionnaire scores, and a real-patient case study.
Chapter 2: The Physical Examination — how to conduct a basic physical examination for a patient with LBP, observation, range of motions testing, basic neurologic screening examination, and clinical reasoning to interpret results.
Chapter 3: Treatment — how to treat patients with mild or moderate pain and low or medium risk of persistent pain; doing extension protocol, flexion protocol, selecting which protocol to use; advice, exercises, posture instruction, self-treatment; how to follow up, progress and discharge patients.

Learning Outcomes

1. Knowledge of prevalence and impact of back pain on the individual and society

2. Able to carry out an evidence based clinical history

3. Able to select appropriate questionnaires to identify red flags

4. Use the StartBack screening tool to assess psychosocial distress and risk of persistent pain

5. Identify cases with possible radicular pain and/or radiculopathy

6. Able to identify that subgroup of patients suitable for basic level guideline care, and those patients who require more advanced or specialist level care

7. Able to do a standard physical examination that includes observation, differentiating between normal asymmetry and relevant deformity, neurologic screening for nerve root compression

8. Able to select appropriate treatment protocols for each patient

9. Learn to follow up in a timely and appropriate manner

10. Able to discharge patients in a timely and appropriate manner

11. Able to adequately document baseline, initial and follow up assessment/treatment findings in clinical notes