Physiotherapy courses: spine,
pain and triage
Neck pain, low back pain, chronic pain and red flags: five courses to reason, triage and treat, all eligible for DPC and FIFPL funding.
In brief
The spine is the leading reason for consulting a physiotherapist, and triage counts here as much as technique. Physio Learning offers five courses in this field: neck pain, low back pain in athletes, chronic pain and psychosocial factors, vascular triage and clinical reasoning. All are eligible for the DPC, the French three-yearly continuing professional development obligation (provider no. 99GX), and for the FIFPL, the training fund for self-employed practitioners.
What this covers,
in practical terms
Pain management is a field of practice recognised by the Conseil national de l’Ordre, the national council of the French physiotherapy regulator. The spine, by contrast, is a Physio Learning teaching grouping, not a field recognised by the regulator.
What this field covers
- Non-specific neck and low back pain, which account for 90 to 95% of low back pain seen in primary care.
- Radicular pain: sciatica, femoral neuralgia, cervicobrachial neuralgia, and what genuinely tells them apart.
- Red flags: what should make you stop and refer on, before you even start treating.
- Chronic pain and its psychosocial factors: catastrophising, kinesiophobia, central sensitisation.
Who it is for
Everyone. The spine is the leading reason for consulting a physiotherapist, and it is also the field where reasoning weighs heaviest against technique.
What changes in your practice
You will triage before you treat, you will recognise nociplastic pain instead of hunting for a lesion, and you will know what to do when imaging shows nothing.
Pain management, a recognised field of practice
“Pain management” is one of the fields of practice (spécificités d’exercice) recognised by the Conseil national de l’Ordre des masseurs-kinésithérapeutes, the national council of the French physiotherapy regulator (opinion of 30 March 2021 on fields of practice).
Courses devoted to the spine feed into the recognised field “Musculoskeletal rehabilitation” (Rééducation du système musculo-squelettique): the spine is one of our teaching areas, not a field of practice in its own right.
Either way, your hours build up course after course. The Physio Learning app records those hours in your skills map, area by area, as each course is completed.
How a field of practice comes to be recognised is a matter for the Ordre des masseurs-kinésithérapeutes.
Select courses and project your hours towards the speciality. 80 h is the milestone we set ourselves, so that a speciality is genuinely within reach with our catalogue.
0 h/ 80 h
Our catalogue currently covers 62 h on this pathway, and we are working on it.
New courses are in preparation to reach 80 h. Tell us which ones would help you most: your feedback shapes what opens next.
Email usYour questions
Do these courses cover red flags?
Yes. Triage sits at the heart of the programme, in particular in the course “Vascular disorders: screening to know when to treat” and in the clinical reasoning module on neck pain.
Is there a course on chronic pain?
Yes: “Chronic pain, psychological factors and disorders” covers psychosocial factors, central sensitisation and pain education.
How can these courses be funded?
Through the DPC, the French three-yearly continuing professional development obligation (provider no. 99GX), or through the FIFPL, the training fund for self-employed practitioners. The rules differ depending on the format. The full comparison is set out in DPC or FIFPL: which to choose?.