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Sibling Rivalry: Low Back Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Sibling Rivalry: Low Back Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Sibling Rivalry: Low Back Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Free
This course includes
Certificate of completion
Overview of this Free Online Course
Mounting evidence suggests that we need to move out of our silos when treating lumbopelvic pain. Musculoskeletal therapists need to consider the pelvic floor's role in lumbopelvic pain and pelvic health therapists need to consider the lumbar spine. 
 
As LBP disability continues to top the charts internationally as the number one cause of disability, this duality can no longer be ignored.  To complicate things further, central sensitization also needs to be considered in lumbopelvic pain since central pain mechanisms are highly comorbid with tenderness on palpation of the pelvic floor and persistent low back pain. 
 
When clinicians treat lumbopelvic pain, their skillset needs to be diversified to include pelvic health, mechanical low back pain, and central pain mechanisms. 
 
One problem, multiple lenses, the only potential solution.
 
This is the second in a three-lecture series that Carolyn Vandyken did as the Keynote speaker for the National Conference on Incontinence in Australia in October 2020.  These lectures were delivered in pre-recorded fashion because of the COVID-19 pandemic; the Continence Foundation of Australia has graciously given us permission to re-air these lectures on Embodia Academy.
 

Learning Objectives

  • Understand how Low Back Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction currently exist stuck in a "Sibling Rivalry"
  • Determine if it is low back pain, pelvic floor dysfunction, or both?
  • Understand the current literature on both low back pain and pelvic floor dysfunction. 
  • Understand how central sensitization is associated with both of these conditions. 
  • Reasons why we should move away from a biomedical model for chronic low back pain.
  • Commonalities in low back pain and pelvic floor dysfunction and how to treat both with a biopsychosocial model.
  • Feel confident performing a physical exam for persistent pain and understand why this is still important.
  • Understand the connection between mechanical low back pain and lower urinary tract symptoms.
  •  Understand why pelvic floor physiotherapists need to start screening the low back and why orthopedic physiotherapists need to start screening the pelvic floor.
 

The Online Course Series

This course series can be found on Embodia as the course track: "An Introduction to the Biopsychosocial Model in Physiotherapy Practice" and can be accessed: HERE.

The course track includes:

  1. Central Sensitization N=1
  2. Sibling Rivalry: Low Back Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction
  3. Consideration of a Biopsychosocial Framework for Overactive Bladder Syndrome and Bladder Pain Syndrome
The instructors
Carolyn Vandyken
BHSc (PT)

Carolyn is the co-owner of Reframe Rehab, a teaching company engaged in breaking down the barriers internationally between pelvic health, orthopaedics and pain science. Carolyn has practiced in orthopaedics and pelvic health for the past 37 years. She is a McKenzie Credentialled physiotherapist (1999), certified in acupuncture (2002), and obtained a certificate in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in 2017.

Carolyn received the YWCA Women of Distinction award (2004) and the distinguished Education Award from the OPA (2015). Carolyn was recently awarded the Medal of Distinction from the Canadian Physiotherapy Association in 2021 for her work in pelvic health and pain science.

Carolyn has been heavily involved in post-graduate pelvic health education, research in lumbopelvic pain, speaking at numerous international conferences and writing books and chapters for the past twenty years in pelvic health, orthopaedics and pain science.

Material included in this course
  • Sibling Rivalry: Low Back Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction
  • Sibling Rivalry: Low Back Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction
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