JOSPT Insights

We all think about how we want our careers to grow and what we see ourselves doing in 10 years. Many of us go into sports physiotherapy/physical therapy because we want to work with athletes in high performance sport. But there's no one career pathway into those roles. How do you shape your own path if you don't have a solid map? Emily Ross has forged one of those paths in elite women's sport—moving from post-graduate clinical practice in musculoskeletal care to working for over 10 years in elite sport.
Emily Ross’ career has centred on achieving excellence, always improving, and finding ways to boost athlete availability. She led the physiotherapy provision for England Rugby’s Red Roses across two World Cup campaigns. Her achievements with the Red Roses include: (i) completing 4 unbeaten Autumn International series and 6 consecutive title-winning Women’s Six Nations tournaments (including 5 Grand slam campaigns), (ii) a silver medal in the 2022 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, and (iii) winning gold at the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 on home soil. Today Emily shares her experiences and her advice for breaking into and sustaining a fulfilling career in elite sport.
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RESOURCES
2023 IOC consensus on relative energy deficiency in sport (REDs)

Osteoarthritis is common, and there's no cure for it. Clinicians working in musculoskeletal rehabilitation are likely to see people who are at risk of, or who have developed, osteoarthritis. In place of a cure, your focus might shift to strategies to reduce the risk of joint trauma—which could be the trigger for developing osteoarthritis years later—or to strategies that aim to slow the progression of the disease.
Dr Tarcisio de Campos—physiotherapist and Clinical Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Institute of Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney and Sydney Local Health District)—tackles the questions of which strategies should you choose and how effective are they?
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RESOURCES
Interventions for preventing knee osteoarthritis: systematic review
OPTIKNEE 2022 consensus recommendations for improving knee health and preventing osteoarthritis

Does the ACL have the capacity to heal following injury? And if it does, what might that mean for how clinicians approach ACL rehabilitation? The prevailing assumption has been that a ruptured ACL has limited capacity to heal and restore structural continuity without reconstruction. Now, a growing body of research is challenging that assumption.
In today's episode, Professor Joanna Kvist (Linköping University, Sweden) discusses new findings from the NACOX cohort examining how ACL structure changes on MRI during the first 2 years following acute ACL injury. Dr Kvist and her team found that ACL structure and fiber continuity improved over time in many participants managed without ACL reconstruction, and greater ACL continuity was associated with less knee laxity on objective measurement.
Dr Kvist explains what the ACL looked like on MRI over those 2 years, the changes in ligament thickness and fiber continuity, how those structural findings related to clinical outcomes, and what clinicians should (and shouldn't) take from these findings when discussing rehabilitation and treatment options with patients.
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RESOURCES
Structural changes of the ACL, evaluated by MRI, and their relation to clinical outcomes within 2 years after ACL injury

The RESTORE trial, published in 2023, put cognitive functional therapy (CFT) on the map as an effective approach for managing chronic, disabling low back pain. Since then, there has been more research supporting CFT, including a large network meta-analysis published in JOSPT in early 2026. In today's episode, we explore the results of the CONFeTTI trial, which tested the CFT+ intervention - combined care delivered by a physiotherapist and a psychologist in an interdisciplinary pain clinic.
Dr Henrik Bjarke Vægter led the CONFeTTI trial. He is an experienced physiotherapist and head of the interdisciplinary Pain Centre at Odense University Hospital in Denmark. Dr Bjarke Vægter is Professor of Physiotherapy and Pain Treatment at the University of Southern Denmark's Department of Clinical Research.
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RESOURCES
CONFeTTI trial
Tailored exercise therapy with or without psychological interventions: systematic review with network meta-analysis
RESTORE trial

How many patients describe receiving what sounds like inadequate care for osteoarthritis before they reached your clinic? Osteoarthritis is one of the most common chronic musculoskeletal conditions. When there are many trustworthy, international clinical guidelines that clearly outline what best-practice osteoarthritis care should entail, why are so many patients missing out on high-value care?
Today's guest, Dr Jodi Young, discusses her team's analysis of data from nearly 25,000 patients who received osteoarthritis care in the United States, and what these data say about osteoarthritis care. Dr Young is the Director of Research for the Doctor of Science in Physical Therapy program at Bellin College in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists.
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RESOURCES
Real-world use of exercise and manual therapy for managing knee osteoarthritis: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/josptopen.2026.0221
Opioid prescribing to active duty US military personnel: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37507224/
Opioid vs. non-opioid medications for people with chronic back pain or hip or knee OA (SPACE Trial): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29509867/
Opioid use patterns among active duty service members and civilians: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29514335/
JOSPT Insights episode 257 - Reflecting on contemporary manual therapy: https://pod.link/1522929437/episode/NzM4ZjYwY2EtMzNhYi00OTI5LWE5OTAtZmUwY2ZkM2QxMDA0