Blogging about research.......

The SomaSimple forums are one of the best resources available for any manual therapist working with clients with chronic pain. However, massage therapists who find their way to the SomaSimple site are often overwhelmed at first by the enormity of the material, intimidated by the level of discussion, and confused about where to start.

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Putting yourself in another’s shoes is much easier said than done.  However, when it is genuinely and successfully attempted it can provide us with some of the most powerful and insightful learning tools.  The 2013 IMTRC provided such an opportunity to attendees in break-out sessions held during the final day’s push towards ascertaining a new massage therapy research agenda for the coming years.  Each break-out session was designed to “see” massage therapy from a different vantage point as well as to assess strengths and challenges that developed from their new viewpoint regarding the legitimacy and acceptance of massage.

As a massage therapist in a family of doctors and more traditional practitioners, I am consistently reminded of many overarching issues that arise when practitioners from holistic and western philosophies attempt to collaborate.  Sitting in on the discussion of massage therapy from the perspective of physicians, the conversation I absorbed was very familiar to me.  In general, there is a need for massage to be redefined, protocoled, and for dosage studies to get underway in order for the efficacy of massage to accurately be measured.  With such studies, syntax and documentation for massage therapy will also need to be addressed and streamlined.  For weeks after this conversation I had the ringing of a physician’s voice in my ear with “what is massage? what is massage? we need to DEFINE MASSAGE!,” I then began to ask myself this.  I have been doing this for 4 years now and here I am at my clinic, working with my clients and all of a sudden I cannot manifest a singular definition for massage.  As a result, I asked my clients.

To many of my clients, massage is an opportunity for them, after surgery, to get range of motion and soft tissue screening between appointments with their surgeons.  For many of my clients, massage is a process in which they can begin to accept their body again after facing any of a spectrum of body image alignments.  For many of my clients, massage is a time during which they can be educated about how work and deconditioning are present in their body; a starting point for setting goals.  Truly quantifiable feedback from my clients only came when exact measurements had been taken: range of motion and strength-based assessments specifically.

My observations at the conference as well as direct feedback from my clients, led me to strongly encourage the enforcement of education reform in massage schools.  For studies of massage efficacy to occur successfully, the measurable components of massage and bodywork need to be isolated.  Therapists need to know how to use a goniometer, how to take blood pressure, how to assess gait and limb discrepancies.  I see massage therapists as important teachers to clients.  We spend more time with our clients than nearly any other practitioner has the luxury of doing.  Understanding functional movement screening and quantifiable outcomes is invaluable to our practice.  This knowledge will give us a solid starting point from which we can BEGIN to understand the effects of massage on our clients in a much more specific light.

I hear massage therapists talking about how massage cannot be measured; “it’s too subjective.”  The important thing to remember, I believe, is that patients are always, first and foremost – human – nebulous and subjective.  There are always aspects of patients that are perhaps not measurable or easily captured. This, consequently, often relates to how therapists feel about the entire field of massage. Many clients choose their therapists based on a “certain something,” something special and perhaps not easily expressed or found in another therapist.  Many massage therapists talk about this, concerned that if we start to take the holistic nature out of massage by throwing it into the science realm, clients will lose that relationship.  Regardless of how “scientific” or measurable a modality is, our clients will always be able to see that side of us.  Now it is our responsibility to find a way to meld what will become a more protocol-oriented treatment regimen WITH that certain something, and create a new type of massage that is both intuitive and organized around proven outcome-based techniques.  I truly believe that this is our future and I truly believe that it will be powerful and meaningful for the entire medical field.

Sarah Rogers resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is a massage therapist and personal trainer.  Her work centralizes around client awareness and (re) education.  She loves the desert and is originally from Arizona.

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This five-part case report webinar series dissects the essential sections of a case report and demystifies the writing process, making it easy for you to write your own case report! Join the Massage Therapy Foundation (MTF) for a new, complimentary webinar series in collaboration with Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP).

Missed out on the live webinars?  Click on each topic for your access to a FREE viewing of each webinar!

Each year, the MTF offers two Case Report Contests, one for students and one for practitioners. Once the winners of each contest go on to have their case report published in a scientific journal they will receive a cash prize. The 2013 Student Case Report Contest (SCRC) submission deadline is June 1, 2013. Learn more about the SCRC.

The 2013 Practitioner Case Report Contest (PCRC) is now open. While the deadline to submit a case report to the PCRC won’t be until October 1, 2013, it’s never too early to start writing your report, and the webinar series below can help you along the way.

1. Writing a Case Report: Where do you start?

Presenter: Jerrilyn Cambron, PhD

Watch the recording of “Writing a Case Report: Where do you start?”

A case report is a description of a client seen in clinical practice which is written in a scientific manner. Case reports may be the only evidence published on massage therapy for a given condition, and may be the “springboard” for researchers to develop larger studies. In this introductory webinar, you will learn how to decide which case might be worth documenting. You will also learn about the different sections of the case report and how to choose the journal to which you will submit your report.

Jerrilyn Cambron, LMT, DC, MPH, PhD, is a professor in the department of research at the National University Health Sciences, where her focus in on complementary and alternative medicine research (CAM) and evidence-based practice. She has been involved in CAM research since 1988, has published extensively in scientific literature, and teaches courses on research design, evidence-based practice, research literacy, and epidemiology. Jerrilyn is currently president-elect of the Massage Therapy Foundation (MTF). She has taught “How to Write Case Reports” for many years, and has worked with numerous health-care professionals to get their case reports published.

2. Introduction and Discussion Sections – Making Your Case

Presenter: Ruth Werner

Watch the recording of “Introduction and Discussion Sections – Making Your Case” This webinar will delve into some strategies for writing the introduction and discussion sections of a good case report, with special emphasis on using other scientists’ work to help inform and advance your own project. While acknowledging that writing a case report is an ambitious project, this webinar helps break the “elephant” into bite-size pieces. Listeners interested in doing a case report will come out of this hour with step-by-step suggestions for how to go about the important task of writing outstanding introduction and discussion sections.

Ruth Werner is a retired massage therapist, writer, and educator with a passionate interest in massage research and the role of bodywork for people who struggle with health issues. She has been on the Case Report Contest Review Committee for the Massage Therapy Foundation since 2007, and she now serves as president of the Massage Therapy Foundation, a philanthropic organization that works to advance the knowledge and practice of massage therapy by supporting scientific research, education, and community service.

3. Reporting the Case – What to Leave in and What to Take Out

Presenter: Karen Boulanger, PhD

Watch the recording of “What to Leave in and What to Take Out”

This webinar focuses on how to write the methods and results section of the case report. This includes describing the client, the specific intervention (massage technique), assessments used, and the results of the treatment. In addition, advice on how to determine the best measurements to use and how to appropriately present the results will be given.

Karen Boulanger has a PhD in community and behavioral health and has been a nationally certified massage therapist since 1999. Her career has included massage therapy, education, and research. She is currently the practice section editor for the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork, and serves on the board of the Massage Therapy Foundation. In addition to her office in San Jose, California, Karen provides care to patients at Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.

4. Research Posters – An Option for Case Presentations

Presenter: Kim Goral Stevenson

Watch the recording of “An Option for Case Presentations”

Research posters are a visual snapshot of information contained in research articles and case reports. They are a great way to communicate the effects of massage therapy in a variety of settings such as your office, a health fair, or even a research conference.  In this webinar, participants will learn how to design and create a research poster, building on concepts discussed in the previous “Writing a Case Report” webinars. Different uses of research posters will also be discussed.

Kim Goral Stevenson, MS, LMT, NCTMB, has been practicing massage since 2006. In addition to her passion for massage, Kim also has a love for science and research and works in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Boston University as an evaluation research analyst.  Kim has worked on a number of research and evaluation projects and her primary research interest related to massage therapy is its effect on psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression.

5. Case Report Contest Winner – Experience from the Field

Watch the recording of “Experience from the Field”

This webinar will be presented by Rosemary Chunco, a Massage Therapy Foundation Case Report Contest gold award winner. She will discuss the challenges encountered in writing a case report and will also give some tips and encouraging reasons why students and practitioners should consider writing a report. She will also provide personal insights on how going through the experience positively changed her outlook on her work.

Rosemary Chunco has been operating her own massage therapy practice in Plano, Texas, since 2003. She previously worked as a software engineer for more than a decade, but following some serious back issues, and being on the receiving end of massage, she changed careers and now enjoys debugging muscular issues! She was the gold award winner in the Practitioner Case Report Contest in 2010 and continues to use massage research to aid with informed, therapeutic decision making in her practice.

 

 

 

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If I could make only one recommendation to people with chronic pain, it would be to read the book Explain Pain by David Butler and Lorimer Moseley.

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Many of you may be aware of the process for making left/right judgments of hands. For those who aren’t, I’ll try to sum it up in brief. When trying to identify whether a picture of a hand is a left hand or a right, it’s thought that we access the cortical maps of our hands. [...]

The poster session reception on Day 2 of the International Massage Therapy Research Conference allowed researchers to present their results to conference attendees, and for those in attendance to get a clearer picture of the kinds of research being done. Being relatively new to the world of massage research, I was eager to get a feel for what it was all about, so I grabbed a plate of fruit and dove right in.

The first thing that struck me was the diversity of the studies presented. There were several case reports, at least one of which I recognized from the AMTA National Convention in Raleigh. There were comparison studies, randomized controlled trials, and qualitative studies of massage therapists. There were posters that involved massage, of course, but also Feldenkrais, energy work, and Kinesio taping. A few were studies looked at educational methods. One was about the Affordable Care Act. So there was definitely something for everyone, even if you weren’t a research geek in general.

The second thing that stuck out to me was the fact that there was a LOT of Kentucky represented in the poster session. I’d never heard of the University of Kentucky having any sort of massage program, so I cornered researcher and LMT Katie Stewart and asked her about it. She confirmed my understanding–there is no massage therapy program at UK–and explained that the university had received a large grant to study complementary and alternative medicine, and they called her out of the blue to ask her about doing some research with them. She agreed, not knowing exactly what she was getting into, but quickly became immersed in the process. One of the neat things about her research was how it was represented by not just one, but two posters: one about the unique protocol used, and a second one that showed the results. Researcher Niki Munk also had a methodology poster and a results poster. It was educational to see how multiple dimensions of learning can come from the same study if the researchers are committed to looking at it from different angles.

I was a little surprised to see how many studies were done by researchers who were not themselves massage therapists. I spoke with Carolyn Palmer, a Feldenkrais practitioner with a Ph.D. in psychology, who was the presenter of a poster that examined the thinking of dual practitioners who practice both Feldenkrais and massage. She noticed that people came to Feldenkrais from many different backgrounds, but massage therapy was particularly common, and she wanted to know how this particular background affected their work. She learned that the massage therapists/Feldenkrais practitioners felt that both their lines of work were supported by the other. Their massage training had given them a better understanding of anatomy and soft tissue, while their Feldenkrais training made them more aware of bones and body movement. I enjoyed peeking into the massage profession from an outsider’s perspective. It was also really gratifying to see a non-massage therapist who was so enthusiastic about the possibilities presented by massage therapy.

Some of the studies were unique for the modality used. Stephanie Owen saw that the kind of hands-on energy work she was providing wasn’t being provided by other practitioners. She decided to show its effectiveness by studying it herself. Her study on children and youth with Asperger’s indicated that her work provided a wide variety of physical, emotional, and social benefits. Perhaps we’ll see one of those fascinating mechanism studies that we heard so much about during the first day of the conference as a follow-up in three years!

Really, just seeing all the research being done, from the individual case report to the well-funded trial, was an exciting experience. But being able to speak with the researchers in person was invaluable. It helped me put the research into context in ways that the posters didn’t themselves explain: the motivations, struggles, and big ideas that accompanied the research. It was also fun to chat with people ask they geeked out about the work they were passionate about and had put many hours of effort into. Over desserts later that evening, a friend and I vowed to each other that in three years, we’d both have posters hanging up there in the hall. Will it actually happen? You’ll have to show up to the next research conference, or you’ll never know.

IMTRC Poster Session

Samuel Wong

Using Massage to Treat Fibromyalgia – Report of a Case Study

Phylis P Rotolo, RN, BSN, LMT

Confusion and Agitation Reduction in an Elderly Client

Nicole Riou, RMT

Massage Therapy for Essential Tremor

John Balletto  BSc, LMT, CKTP

Massage and Kinesio Taping for Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Descriptive Case Report

Jeff Moggach, MT, MA

Human Patient Simulation Technology for Massage Therapy Education

Pamela Fitch, BA, RMT, Farbod Karimi, EdD, MEd, BBA, Marvin Mohring, BSc(Kin), RMT

Learning how to treat scars and write case reports as a means of fostering research literacy and capacity

Jennifer Merciér, Midwife, LMT, PhD, Karen Miller, LMT

Merciér Therapy Helps Infertile Women Achieve Pregnancy

Jan Worsley Cendese, LCSW, LMT, APP, CCP, Roger Olbrot, BA, LMT, David Hodges, Stephanie Owen, PhD, Kerry Dew, BA, MBA

Is there a place for energy work with children living with Autism:  A qualitative study

Carolyn Palmer, PhD

The Feldenkrais Method of Movement Awareness: Lessons for Attunement and Ease

Luann Drolc Fortune, PhD, MA, LMT, NCBTMB, Glenn M Hymel, EdD, LMT

How Massage Therapists Execute a Whole Session with Established Clients

Diana L Thompson, LMP, Marissa Brooks, MPH, LMP, Michael Hamm, LMP, CCST, Benjamin Erkam, MA, Kenneth Pfaff, HFWLS, HPCUHGS  

Summary of Evidence: Massage Therapy is an Integral Component in the Affordable Care Act’s Essential Health Benefits

Niki Munk, PhD, LMT, TB Symons, PhD, J Watkins, PhD, A Harrison, PhD, WG Elder, PhD, & F Zanjani, PhD  

The evolution of methodology for a pilot study examining massage effects on physiological fatigue in healthy older adults

Kathryn Stewart, BS, LMT, RCST, N Munk, PhD, LMT, E Carter, BS, M Love, PhD,  G Bruckner, PhD, WG Elder, PhD

Novel Clinical Massage Therapy Protocol Allows for Exploration of Real World Massage Therapy Practice

Jeffrey Forman, PhD, NCTMB, Michael E Rogers, PhD, Lisbeth Geertsen, MS, CMT

Effect of deep stripping massage vs. deep stripping massage combined with eccentric resistance on hamstring length and strength

Younes Jahangiri Noudeh, MD, Nasibeh Vatankhah, MDm, Hamid Reza Baradaran, MD

Reduction of current tension-type headache pain intensity after a simple neck and upper thoracic spinal massage and manipulation

Niki Munk, PhD, LMT and WG Elder, PhD  

Older Clients Receiving Massage Therapy Report Larger Reductions in Perceived Pain

Kathryn Stewart, BS, LMT, RCST, N Munk, PhD, LMT, E Carter, BS, M Love, PhD, G Bruckner, PhD, WG Elder, PhD 

Initial steps to inform primary care provider referral criteria to clinical massage therapy for chronic low back pain

Lynn E Watanabe, DDS, John Chien, JD, Ching-piao Chien, MD

Can Massage Help Reduce Dental Anxiety? A Randomized Controlled Trial

Tanya Zilberter, PhD, Anya Ferry, MEd, Roger Borbon, DC, DACNB, FACFN, CCCN

Neuro-immuno-endocrinology of the skin, brain-skin axis and hormesis as possible mechanisms of therapeutic modalities using cutaneous stimulation

About Kat Mayerovitch

Kat is a massage therapist who practices and writes in Cleveland, Ohio. Some of her writing can be found at LMT or Bust, a blog for massage therapy students and recent graduates.

Make a minimum online donation of $10 to the MTF in the month of May and you will be entered into a drawing to win an autographed TEAM MTF-Running For Research jersey (Men’s size Medium).  The jersey is signed by all three MTF Boston Marathon runners:  Kathy Borsuk, Tom Heidenberger, and Les Sweeney.  Proceeds will be split evenly between the MTF and One Fund Boston 2013, to help those most affected by the tragic events of the 2013 Boston Marathon.  The MTF would like to thank everyone for thier positive support and well wishes over the last few weeks.

Click here for more information on ways to donate to MTF.

 

On what looks like a very fresh Danish weekend, some fearsome warriors put on their Ride for Pain jerseys and took on the elements. Watch the day unfold in the latest Danish entry for the Cannes short-film awards, in the 'Raising awareness of the world's most burdensome health issue' category.

Low back pain can be a scary experience. When pain is perceived as being harmful or dangerous to the individual, it becomes something feared and avoided.But little is known in the literature about what people with chronic low back pain are fearful of and why.

…as reported by Kat Mayerovitch, Amber Robidoux and Allissa Haines

Day 3 of the International Massage Therapy Research Conference opened with Janet R. Kahn, PhD presenting the keynote “Massage in 21st Century Healthcare: Let’s Seize the Moment!” With humor and startling statistics (The US spends more than every other wealthy nation on earth, but our collective health lags far behind) Dr. Kahn illustrated the need to learn from other countries and the importance of collaboration among health professionals.

Bodhi Haraldsson, RMT moderated the panel discussion “Next Steps in Massage Therapy Research” and after lunch the attendees broke into small groups to discuss the Massage Therapy Research Agenda Planning. The day wrapped up with beautiful closing sentiments from President Ruth Werner. She thanked the MTF staff for their tremendous efforts to make the conference a success, and shared the MTF’s vision that the practice of massage therapy be evidence-informed and accessible to everyone.

The wonderful vendors

Attendee and volunteer Amber Robidoux had the opportunity to talk with some of the vendors of the IMTRC. Here’s what she learned from chatting with them on the second day of the conference:

First I talked with Tim Herbert from Books of Discovery, who publish the famous Trail Guide to the Body books and study aides used by so many students and practitioners. When I asked him what he enjoyed about the event, he asked, “What hasn’t already been said?” He appreciates how much everyone loves massage therapy, and how much it can contribute to a world in need.

Next up was Debra Curties of Curties-Overzet Publications, a Canadian publisher of massage and bodywork-related books on a wide variety of topics. Debra said it was great seeing how many people were interested in massage therapy research, and that it was a privilege to be able to be in the same room as the presenters.

Jonathan Joyce is a new editor at Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a huge name in massage publications. They offer textbooks on everything from anatomy to business to specific techniques, and books for medicine, nursing, and other health professions too. Jonathan feels that the IMTRC is a great meeting of the top minds in our industry, and really appreciates how many of the top massage therapy authors in the field are big supporters of the Massage Therapy Foundation. Jonathan said he loved being at IMTRC to support their authors, and his enthusiasm was apparent.

I also had the chance to speak with William Collinge from the Touch, Caring, and Cancer Program, which empowers family and friends of people with cancer to use touch to ease their loved ones’ suffering and make caregiving a more positive experience. William is thrilled to see how the conference has embraced public and community health, and is not limiting itself to studies done in a clinical setting.

Of course I had to stop by and ask Ruth Werner to say something while she was hanging out at the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork table, supporting the free, open-source, peer-reviewed journal. Before I even started asking about the journal, Ruth said, “Isn’t this awesomesauce?!” Yes. Yes it is. Every massage therapists should be subscribing and reading regularly.

Members of the American Massage Therapy Association, presenting sponsor of the event, were all around me as participants, presenters, and volunteers. From the excited expressions on the faces of so many of my fellow AMTA members, I got the impression that the IMTRC was very appreciated indeed.

More to come

There were many, many exciting conversations and brilliant questions asked throughout the 2013 IMTRC, too many to summarize and answer in these daily wrap up posts! Stay tuned to this blog (subscribe in the column to the right) for discussions, answers and further information about the topics covered at the 2013 International Massage Therapy Research Conference.

 

…as reported by Kat Mayerovitch & Allissa Haines

Day 2 of the International Massage Therapy Research Conference opened with Leslie Korn, PhD, MPH, NCB, LMHC, RPE presenting the Keynote, Somatic Empathy: Restoring Community Health with Massage.

With a beautiful storytelling style, Dr. Korn’s told us about her work collaborating with tribal communities in the US and Mexico to restore touch therapies and traditional foods nutrition in response to complex and historical trauma.

Jerrilyn Cambron moderated the morning’s panel discussion, Massage in the Community; Informing Public Health. Shay Beider, MPH, LMT, Mary Fabri, PsyD, Nancy Keeney Smith, LMT, MLD, NCTMB, Elizabeth Sommers, PhD, MPH, Lac.

Attendees chose between four breakout lunch discussions, ranging from the impact of the Affordable Care Act on massage and insurance billing to a discussion of Hospital Based Massage programs.

The afternoon hosted five concurrent sessions. There were three panel discussions: Community-based Massage & Massage for Special Populations, moderated by Ruth Werner, Case Reports moderated by Martha Menard, PhD, CMT, and Hospital-based Massage Therapy moderated by Diana L. Thompson, LMP.  Karen T. Boulanger, PhD, CMT and Jerrilyn Cambron, PhD led Practice Based Research Methods, and the Workshop Best Practices Guidelines: Building the Framework, was led by Michael Hamm, LMP, CCST, John Balletto, BSc, LMT, CKTP, Keith Eric Grant, PhD, Marissa Brooks, MPH, LMP, Donelda-Moody, RMT, Dale Healey, DC, Diana Kincaid, LMP, & Ravensara Travillian, PhD, LMP. Full schedule and details are available here.

The day was wrapped up with a short Q & A session with president Ruth Werner and volunteer Allissa Haines, answering questions posed on Facebook, Twitter and live. Some of the questions and answers are posted below, many will be answered in coming blog posts.

Questions & answers

If infant massage has been shown to be so darn effective, why isn’t it used more?

• Nurses working in the NICU experience so much emotional stress, they disconnect and may not be able to provide massage while maintaining their own personal boundaries they’ve erected for self-preservation.
• Physical therapists are sometimes wary of massage therapists encroaching on their territory.
• We have not effectively communicated our level of comfort with working with difficult populations like those found in the NICU.
• There is a lack of understanding about touch in our society as a whole. Many people have concerns about massage possibly being sexual in nature.

Do massage therapists feel like teaching people self-massage is a bit like giving away the store?

• It’s not disempowering to therapists, it’s empowering to clients.
• It brings a new level of accessibility to massage.
• It improves interoception. We’re not going anywhere, there’s always a need for professional massage. We can’t work on our own backs!
• It’s not giving away the store, it’s expanding the store! It provides another income stream that is less physically demanding, and increases the visibility of the massage profession.
• There are benefits of giving for the giver. Teaching people to provide massage is also a “treatment” we can offer them for their own healing.
• We need to teach touch in this economy. People can’t afford to get all the massage they need from a professional. In order to serve our clients, we need to empower them to treat themselves.
• The Affordable Care Act is pushing us to think about family delivery and community delivery. Teaching massage is a great way to integrate massage into these models.

 

…as reported by Kat Mayerovitch & Allissa Haines

The day began with opening remarks from MTF President Ruth Werner, and a lovely Native American Blessing from Luata Bray, LMP Choctaw Native, and Donna Edmonds Mitchell, Wampanoag Nation of Massachusetts.

Opening Keynote “Mechanisms and Beyond: What is Needed to Prove the Effectiveness of Massage?” was presented by Jeanette Ezzo, LMT, MPH, PhD. It was fun and funny, interesting, and everyone in the room walked away with new ideas and information.

The morning Panel Presentation “How does Massage Work? Potential Mechanisms” was moderated by Cynthia Price, PhD, MA, LMP, and included presentations from four speakers. Full program available here. Volunteers from the AMTA-MA Chapter provided chair massage in the rear of the room throughout the morning program and

At the First-Timer’s lunch president-elect Jerrilyn Cambron welcomed newcomers to massage and conferences and ran through ideas and activities that can make attending a research conference more fun and user-friendly. Allissa Haines spoke about using research online marketing for and use of online venues for community-building within the massage profession.

In the afternoon Michael Hamm, LMP, CCST moderated  ”Basic Science: Biological & Psychological Models of Massage” with panel of five presenters.  Other afternoon workshops included Introduction to Program Evaluation with Martha Menard, PhD, CMT,  Enhancing the Art of Peer Review with Karen T. Boulanger, PhD, CMT; Jerrilyn Cambron, PhD; Antony Porcino, PhD and Massage Therapy for Specific Conditions,  Moderated by John Balletto, BSc, LMT, CKTP.

The day was wrapped up with a short Q & A session with president Ruth Werner and volunteer Allissa Haines, answering questions posed on Facebook, Twitter and live. Some of the questions and answers are posted below, many will be answered in coming blog posts.

Questions & answers

How do brand spankin’ new LMTs get involved in research?
Get learning! Check out the MTF’s Basics of Research Literacy , an online, 8 hour NCBTMB-approved workshop for massage therapists and educators. We also suggest the two free ebooks, Working with Physicians, A Massage Therapist’s Guide, and The Case for Pain Relief, 5 Research Studies for Massage Therapists

Get writing! Consider writing a case report, and submitting to the MTF’s annual contest. Watch the 5 part Webinar, Writing Case Reports to learn how. And check out  Martha Brown Menard’s book, Making Sense of Research, also available in the exhibit area here at the IMTRC.

Will there be a hard copy of the proceedings sent to me, or a flash drive, or online?
Most presentations are available online at the conference-specific webpage.

Will the presentations not yet on the site be uploaded later?
No, not all of them. Some presenters are not able to share their slideshow, due to pending publishing & copyright issues.

How can I stay up to date on research? Can you recommend a good “notification” resource to locate the most current research?

• Download the MTF Education Toolbar! It’s a streamlined compendium of all the most useful resources across the web, including search engines, study tools, image libraries, research info, and much more.

• Subscribe to the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (IJTMB)

• Subscribe to email alerts with specific keywords at PubMeb.gov & Google Update

What are strategies for collaborating with people in other fields for multi-modal research?

• It can be challenging because researchers get busy with their own research.

• Send them an email, follow up with a phone call, say a bit about their research, and propose what you would like to do.

• They might not get back to you directly, they may pass your email on to a student, someone else in their department, etc.

• No response? No online, see who else works in that department, see if they’re interested. Don’t give up!

• Any trial in the US has to be registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, so you can search there for people who are doing related work.

• If there’s a medical school in your area, they may be doing research that hasn’t been labelled as complementary or alternative medicine but includes massage, so expand your search. It can’t hurt to call and ask what they’re working on.

• Use resources like PubMed to find people who have done research in massage, contact them to see if they’ve got anything going on right now, and propose new possibilities.

• Researchers put their whole hearts into their work. It never hurts to play up the researcher’s ego a bit, by talking about how brilliant their last paper was.

There were some studies mentioned today that involved Swedish massage. How is that defined? This is a question that plagues lots of researchers!

• A tool to get around this problem is the taxonomy of massage, which came out in 2006 and looks at types of strokes and what the hands are doing, rather than technique names and trademarked terms.

• For example, gliding instead of effleurage, static pressure instead of trigger point therapy, etc.

• In one study, they didn’t call it Swedish massage, they called it full-body relaxation massage

• Our language limits us when we try to communicate with other healthcare practitioners, who don’t know what all our specialized terminology means. This includes terms like Swedish massage, which seem obvious to massage therapists.

Can standardized protocols truly mimic the real world, where treatment is customized to treatment needs? Is there a value in studies with standardized/non-standardized protocols?

• With the taxonomy, people can describe exactly what they have done in a treatment. If you have a common language, you can work with a range of techniques and describe them accurately for the researcher, and not necessarily have to rely on a standardized protocol. A great open-source article describing massage terms is here.

• Looking at what we’re trying to accomplish informs whether we use standardized vs nonstandardized protocols

• Studies on mechanisms require standardized protocols, outcomes maybe not so much

• Either way, documentation is key!

• The dichotomy between standardized and nonstandardized protocols may call for more intricate and complicated study designs. As long as you can build models that account for certain patient characteristics being therapeutic indications for certain specific treatments, the study can remain controlled while still allowing for patient variability.

What do you do with all this information? What guidance is there? (Ruth has all kinds of opinions about this!)

• Take Basics of Research Literacy class through the Massage Therapy Foundation.

• If you can’t apply it, what’s the point?

• Don’t forget why we encourage research to begin with. Everything that we do should have as its goal client outcomes.

• Better client outcomes means better therapist incomes.

• The Foundation is developing guidelines for putting research and practice together. It’s very exciting!

What did we learn today?

• Abdominal pumping for everyone!

• Avoid surgical site, everywhere else is okay for post-surgical patients.

• We can and should educate our clients to take care of themselves

• Does massage impact circulation? Research seems to indicate that we might.

Almost everyone suffers acute pain. Why do most recover, but an unfortunate few descend a downward spiral of social, personal and economic disadvantage? One hypothesis that has been interrogated for two decades is the fear avoidance model. Nonetheless, the case is not settled and some might argue that the fear avoidance model has not lived up to its considerable expectations.

Clinical research into the management of low back pain has shown that the current available treatments offer, at best, only moderate effects. Our Spinal Research Group at the University of Sydney has been one of the pioneers in the field and most of these discouraging results have been produced by high quality randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews conducted by our group. Not surprisingly we thought that we needed a change in the course of direction of the spinal management boat

The final day of 2013 International Massage Therapy Research Conference will focus on developing a new Massage Therapy Research Agenda.  This research agenda will be used by the Massage Therapy Foundation (MTF) and other research funding agencies both governmental and private, and by individual researchers to design studies that can deliver the information needed to move massage therapy strategically in the 21st century.

The first massage therapy research agenda was developed in 1999 by a specially convened group of massage therapists, clinical trial researchers and basic (or bench) research scientists.  That meeting and agenda have been important to the MTF in a number of ways for the last decade.  First of all, it kind of put the Foundation on the map for a lot of researchers.  Secondly, the educational exchange between the massage therapists and the scientists was very important. By the end of the conference there was a small group of researchers who knew a lot more about therapeutic massage than they had before.  For instance, they learned that therapists often think of ourselves as educators as well as “massagers.”  In addition, the MTs had learned about kinds of research they never considered before, and the Foundation had been encouraged not just to provide research funding but to think about how to cultivate a cadre of massage therapists dedicated to doing research in our field.

As good as that was…we will not be following exactly the same process because…times have changed.  The world of integrated healthcare has been clearly recognized in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare as they say) and opportunities are opening up.  But, windows of opportunity also have time limits on them, so we need to plan for this reality.   All of this I will describe in my keynote address on April 27th.  And it is information that conference participants will put to use that Saturday afternoon when we spend time in small groups brainstorming different aspects of that research agenda.  To ready us for that Martha Menard and I have gathered some impressions of massage from physicians (MDs, Dos, DCs, etc.), consumers, other health care providers (Nurses, acupuncturists, PAs, etc.), and insurance commissioners. We will share that information before the small groups and then reconvene later for a good conversation about what to include in a research agenda that will position therapeutic massage for the 21st century.

PS – to read a summary of the “old” agenda go to http://www.massagetherapyfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/MRAW_Outcomes.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sunday April 7th saw hundreds of cyclists take to the River or the Hills on an absolutely glorious Adelaide autumn day. The mercury nudged 30C and the spirits were even higher. Over 250 cyclists took on the whole 100km and 100 of those participated in the first ever age-weight adjusted time trial up the infamous Corkscrew Road.

Our research laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the United States has tested a distinguished form of physical therapy for persons with chronic walking difficulty from multiple sclerosis. The therapy is called Constraint-Induced Movement therapy, or CI therapy for short.

Since the International Massage Therapy Research Conference is right around the corner, we wanted to give you a taste of what the experience is like. But don’t take our word for it… listen to what these previous attendees have to say!

Judy Stahl, former AMTA National President, was most impressed by all the people she met. Listen to her testimonial:

 

 

Irene Diamond is a well-known educator and also known as “Therapist Tour Guide to Business Success.” Listen to her take on the importance of research and how it affects your business:

 

 

Finally, Doug explains his appreciation for all the programs offered by the Massage Therapy Foundation and how you can get involved:

 

 

As you can see, there are a lot of great reasons to attend the 2013 International Massage Therapy Research Conference in Boston.

Will we see you there?

 

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Here, Gian Domenico Alessandro Magnifico Fantistico Iannetti and Flavia Eleganta Bellisima Mancini talk us through pain at your fingertips. They did a very groovy experiment that, for the first time, uncovered the pattern of receptive fields for nociception at the finger tips.

There is an emerging body of literature that suggests that we can change the way people understand their pain. We can reconceptualize pain in a way that makes clear the distinction between tissue damage, nociception and pain.