Understanding Valgus
If you have ever attended one of my courses, you will hear me refer to valgus as “the boogeyman of the knee”. We seem to blame it for a lot of issues and see...
Category: Interventions
Because You Know I’m All About That Base
“This is a common pattern: people who have information about an individual case rarely feel the need to know the statistics of the class to which the case belongs.” – Daniel Kahneman I have...
Steaming Pile of Research
There is a particular type of study that I really, really hate. It is extremely common and often seen in the physical therapy research. I see it cited time and again by speakers at...
Practice Template
One of the great things about the modern PT student is their level of education. Current programs, with the occasional unfortunate exception, do a pretty good job giving a proper foundation of the scientific...
Placebo-Fu
“An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.” – Henri-Frédéric Amiel Ah placebo! Along with natural history and regression to the mean, it is one of the positive non-specific effects of...
Treating Ghosts
A common argument that I hear is, “Since pain is a subjective interpretation, who cares how it improves?” The reasoning goes that the pain is real to the patient, so if a treatment makes improvement...
It’s Magic!
“I see you have a deck of cards. Go ahead and shuffle them in any way you would like then hand me the deck.” You look at your deck of cards, a deck your...
What Is Your Razor?
“Often myths arise because a single claim or research finding has particular intuitive appeal. The claim makes sense, it supports a popular argument, and soon it is cemented as taken-for-granted fact even though its evidence base...
Is pain what brought the patient in? Kind of, but not exactly…
Many times when I’m discussing placebo and specific effects, physical therapists will say, “The patient doesn’t care. They just want less pain. We should give them less pain even if it’s temporary and the treatment...