Physiopedia and IFOMPT, a Successful Partnership in Quebec

Once every four years is the World Congress of Musculoskeletal and Manual Therapy organised by the International Federation of Orthopaedic Manipulative Physical Therapists (IFOMPT) brings together and leading experts and an international audience for a celebration of musculoskeletal and manual therapy.  This year in Quebec was a great example of knowledge translation (one of this year’s themes of the conference) with new evidence presented by leaders in the field, great learning occasions through workshops and course, as well as classic conference networking opportunities.

This year Physiopedia partnered with the IFOMPT conference to provide online reporting from the conference through the social media.  We set up a blog which reported live from the conference, so if you were unable to attend this year you can read about many of the key sessions here.  The keynote and invited speaker presentations were inspiring and thought provoking and well worth recording for future reference.  Not only was our blogging team keeping us informed from key presentations but they were also stimulating the #IFOMPT12 Twitter stream.  The most mentioned ‘clinical pearl’ on Twitter was “Smokadiabesity” from Karim Khan and the most re-tweeted comment was from David Butler “If your back was on your face, you would take better care of it”.  Does this say something about the way our profession is heading….?

We are very grateful to the voluntary contributions from our great blogging team

ifompt blogging team
From left to right, Kevin Rudolph, not a blogger but tagging along, Jesse Awenus, of jessephysio fame, Sarah Slater, Rachael Lowe, founder of Physio Pedia, Jon Ward head of the STOPS Back Pain Research, Alexander Chan. Sarah, Alex are completing their PhD in physiotherapy with Jon Ward, and Erson Religioso, The Manual Therapist (Mike Pascoe was unable to join us for the blogging team outing).

Rachael Lowe, Physiopedia Founding Director, was in attendance and gave a presentation and a workshop both with a knowledge translation theme.  The presentation, Facilitating Knowledge Becoing Action Through Open Acces, was part of a focused symposium – Knowledge Translation and Patient Education: From Knowledge Inquiry to Action – with Jordan Miller, Lucie Brosseau and Joy MacDermid.  It was a well received presentation and the symposium generated some interesting topics of discussion.

The workshop titled, Satisfying the Evolving Role of Physiotherapists in Knowledge Translation Using an International Physiotherapy Specific Wiki, was (yes you guessed it!) about the role Physiopedia can play in Knowledge Translation.  Rachael was joined by Jordan Miller and Elaine Lonnemann who both gave examples of how they have used Physiopedia under very different cicumstances for knowledge translation. Jordan talked about the open publishing of the new Manual Therapy and Exercise for Neck Pain: Clinical Treatment Tool-kit and Should I receive manual therapy and exercise for my neck pain?: A patient decision aid, and Elaine demonstrated the way in which she has been using Physiopedia within education.

So all in all, a great conference which generated some good discussions for Physiopedia, fantastic opportunities to meet some of our project leads, sponsors and enthusiasts and great times making new friends and collaborators for the future.