"When we see something of significance occur in our clinical practices---something we are excited about---we should share these experiences or findings with others, even if it simply involves telling the commonplace story. There is no cache of case reports that tell our stories, so by sharing these experiences, we can forward the field."

From Massage Research: Progress Puts Touch Under the Microscope (Massage Magazine) by Diana Thompson and Albert Moraska

The importance of case reports is recognized by many as being key in furthering progress within the profession.  This is further shown by the incentives given by the Massage Therapy Foundation to provide findings from their practices by having case report contests for both massage therapy practitioners and students.

This section of the site is for you to pose questions about Case Studies. 

Three very important notices!

Protect the privacy and confidentiality of your client

Before sharing a case report in this or any other venue, you must remove any identifying details that can reasonably be used to determine the identity of your client. This includes, but is not limited to, names, addresses, and other personal details. You must follow the required HIPAA--compliant standards of patient privacy and confidentiality that is required for all of your dealings with clients/patients for any case report that you share with POEM or with any other public venue.

Protect your ability to publish your case report

You may post a case report here for others to give guidance on, and you can share your findings, and get community feedback here.

However, you should be aware that if you want to have your case report published, posting it here first may interfere with your ability to publish it elsewhere.

POEM claims no rights to your case study. Another publishing venue may want exclusive rights, or first rights, or another combination of rights on the work you submit to them, and if your case study is already published on POEM, they may decide that since it has already been published, they will not accept the work you submitted to them.

Be sure to protect your future options for publishing your case report by checking with the publisher you want to submit it to before posting it to POEM.

Play by the rules in case report competitions

If you are planning to submit your case report to the Massage Therapy Foundation's student or practitioner case report competition, notice that their rules permit up to 2 advisors, and those advisors cannot participate in the writing of the case report.

Therefore, putting a case report in progress up to the POEM community for feedback, and then submitting it to the competition, would be:

1. cheating, and
2. grounds for being banned from the POEM discussion boards.

DON'T DO IT!

How to write and post a case report

We recommend you use the Massage Therapy Foundation's guidelines as a template to structure the writing of your case report.

CLICK HERE TO ADD A CASE REPORT or to ask a question regarding doing a case report.