Highlighting Physiotherapy in Pediatric Chronic Pain Management for Physiotherapy Month
May was National Physiotherapy Month and we’re celebrating the amazing physiotherapists like Sara Klein, who co-lead our ECHO Pain Management program, and all the PTs on our teams and in our community of practice. Sharing this nice spotlight of Brooke Biggs, PT in the Pediatric Chronic Pain Program at McMaster Children’s Hospital, talking about the importance of physical activity and physiotherapy in paediatric chronic pain management.
Importance of physical activity in pediatric chronic pain management | Brooke Biggs, MSc PT ( Video Run Time: 2:05min.)
For children and youth living with chronic pain, exercise is not as simple as deciding to participate or not. Brooke Biggs is a physiotherapist in the Pediatric Chronic Pain Program at McMaster Children’s Hospital and an active participant in the ECHO Paediatrics Chronic Pain program and community of practice. As Brooke explains in our Community Insights video “young people are moving around, they have to carry their backpack. They have to navigate the stairs in the high schools. And oftentimes that’s really difficult with chronic pain….physical activity is one of the biggest things that we can do on a consistent daily basis to help with pain. We don’t tell kids that we’re going to take their pain away, but we tell them that we’re going to make their life fuller.”
Watch the short video below.
ECHOPaeds “Community Insights” is a new video series where we share insights, tips and reflections on healthcare experience and best-practices as shared by and with the ECHO the interprofessional Community of Practice that forms the ECHO Paediatrics collaborative, CPD-accredited programs.
Body Break - Turning Virtual Education Days into Physical Fun
As a relevant aside, we’re sharing our much loved fan favourite video, “Body Break with Brooke Biggs and Anne Ayling Campos”. A fun parody of the great Canadiana Body Break fitness series, Brooke – a physiotherapist with McMaster Children’s Hospital and Anne Ayling Campos – a physiotherapist with SickKids, joined forces when we ran the first of our annual virtual ECHO education events (E3) for paediatric chronic pain management.
As the pandemic moved all things virtual, our interactive Body Break was a creative opportunity to break through the divide, to bring the physical into our virtual space, to focus on our human body shifting it from sedentary digital space (while still connected there) and authentically integrating the health education themes and messaging of physiotherapy and chronic pain management. It was also just a blast.
So as Brooke and Anne say: Let’s, Get, Started!