This course is available as a standalone CE course or as an elective for our new Advanced Practice Certification.

With the increasing interest in pain neuroscience education (PNE) there has developed a potential clinical crossroad. PNE is a cognitive intervention, purposefully shifted away from the biomedical and anatomical model. In fact, current PNE research deliberately avoids biomedical education as means to“undo” traditional pain models. With this purposeful shift, many clinicians are left with the question: Is pain science hands-on or hands-off? This session will delve into the cohabitation of PNE and various physical treatments such as mobilization, manipulation, soft tissue treatments, dry needling and exercise.

This session will showcase how PNE and physical treatments, especially manual therapy, can and should co-exist. Advances in the understanding of functional and structural changes in the brain shows manual treatments should cohabit with PNE as means to remap cortical maps, alter nociceptive input into the central nervous system, facilitating descending inhibitory mechanisms, etc. Furthermore, emerging PNE research has shown that a combination of physical treatment and PNE is superior to PNE-only approaches and furthermore, PNE can in essence decrease sensitization, thus providing a window of opportunity to introduce physical treatments. This session will additionally showcase the emerging models for choosing PNE and/or manual therapy in patients presenting to physical therapy.

Course Outcomes