Clinical Practice Guidelines for Neck Pain

Course Description

Clinicians lack knowledge in using the APTA’s Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) and clinical reasoning to diagnose and manage neck pain.  After completing this program, the participant will be able to incorporate clinical practice guidelines when designing a plan of care for managing neck pain.

Participants will be introduced to the current evidence-based approach to management of neck pain using Clinical Practice Guidelines from the Orthopaedic Physical Therapy Section of the American Physical Therapy Association with clinical reasoning. As payers and medical practitioners increasingly depend on evidence-based Guidelines, clinicians must utilize published recommendations when selecting examination tools and designing therapeutic programs to direct functional outcomes and to optimize documentation for reimbursement.

CPGs are intended to complement the clinical reasoning process of clinicians, not to provide a mandated protocol for making decisions about patient management.

Course Objectives

At the end of this course, the participant will be able to:

• Summarize the terminology and recommendations used in the CPG for neck pain
• Discuss the current clinical practice guidelines (CPG) for patients with neck pain (LBP) as developed by the orthopedic section of the American Physical Therapy Association
• Conduct an examination for patients with neck pain and interpret the results to diagnose anatomical and functional impairments and classify people into the associated impairment-based category.
• Select intervention strategies to address activity restriction limitations and functional mobility impairments based on the CPG classification of impairments for neck pain.

• Prerequisites

  None

• Educational Level

  Intermediate

• Other

  Satisfactory completion of this course will require the participant to complete a 10 question post-test with a minimum passing score of 70%.