Postdoctoral Fellows
Katie Kowalski
Postdoctoral Researcher
Google Scholar profile
To address the massive global burden of spinal pain, musculoskeletal physiotherapists must have sound clinical reasoning and decision making using a comprehensive assessment to treat the complexities of spinal pain effectively and safely. My postdoctoral program of research has two arms:
- Physical measures in a comprehensive assessment of low back pain. Current assessment approaches do not adequately address the complexity and heterogeneity of low back pain. Patient reported outcome measures are the norm and important to capture the patient’s perspective, but do not assess the multiple dimensions of low back pain. Physical measures are emerging as important to outcome and useful to inform decision making. I am exploring the most appropriate physical measures to incorporate as part of a comprehensive assessment to predict outcome from low back pain and identify mechanism-based subgroups.
- Clinical reasoning and decision making in novice, advancing and expert physiotherapists. Sound clinical reasoning underpins effective musculoskeletal rehabilitation and patient outcomes are improved when clinical reasoning is developed to an expert level. I am exploring clinical reasoning in learners at different levels of physiotherapy practice and developing decision tools to aid decision making.
Aliyu Lawan
Postdoctoral Researcher
Google Scholar profile
Understanding Musculoskeletal Health (pain, functioning, and disability) through individualized, multifaceted approached of the biopsychosocial model. My postdoctoral research projects include:
- Precision Multi-Axis Pain Assessment of Injured Workers to Improve Treatment and Work Outcomes: As research and knowledge grows it is increasingly clear that injured workers are not a single homogenous group but are instead a mixed group of people with unique characteristics that can be expected to influence the effectiveness of different treatment options and speed of recovery. The project aims to develop and evaluate a predictive assessment model to triage workers to the best service within the first 8 weeks of their claim to increase the rate of early return to work, with the long-term goal that the triage protocol becomes part of a person-centric protocol that reduces the duration of work-related disability.
- Quantifying sex-differentiated norms of stress-system reactivity in humans: The role of stress system dysregulation as a key etiologic driver in chronic pain and depression has been established. Using the first-of-its-kind research paradigm that pairs immersive virtual reality with sense of movement under controlled laboratory conditions to acquire new knowledge on the range of normal reactions to motor vehicle collision, predict the magnitude of reaction based on person-level variables of sex, gender, age, and prior trauma, and test causal pathways of pain and distress development using advanced virtual reality integrated with robotic movement experience.
