PPS Episode 4: Building a Framework for Treatment Validation
Over the years, I began recognizing that I needed more than good hands, advanced training, and a collection of massage techniques. Even when I understood the clinical approach I wanted to take with a client, I still needed a consistent way to determine whether the treatment I provided was actually successful.
Was I treating the right problem? Did I work in the right order? Did the client's pain actually change, or did the tissue just feel different under my hands? And if something improved, how long did that improvement last?
Those questions became an important part of developing Pain Patterns & Solutions (PPS), because I wanted more than a treatment protocol. I wanted a framework that would allow me to gather information, organize what I was seeing, establish treatment priorities, and then validate the results of the decisions I made.
In this fourth episode of our PPS series, we're bringing together many of the principles we've been discussing and looking at how they become part of an organized framework for pain management and treatment validation.
In this episode, we'll explore:
Mapping pain patterns: Documenting pain precisely, recognizing relationships between seemingly unrelated areas, and comparing those patterns before and after treatment.
Understanding treatment hierarchy: How PPS identifies priorities, determines treatment order, and recognizes when certain painful areas may need to be left alone.
Establishing measurable checkpoints: Using pre- and post-treatment pain levels, changes in pain and pain patterns on maps, and the body's response to determine whether the treatment created the changes we expected.
Evaluating treatment results: Understanding why softer tissue doesn't necessarily mean less pain, why improvements need to hold beyond the treatment session, and what those results tell us about our next treatment.
Using treatment validation to guide clinical decisions: Learning when to continue, when to stop, when to change direction, and how to use the information collected to plan future treatments.
Understanding treatment frequency: How tracking pain levels can help us and our clients recognize when additional treatment may be beneficial rather than waiting until pain becomes overwhelming again.
I'll also share some of the experiences that helped me develop these principles, including a Lumbar Bulging Disc Pain Pattern and a SI Joint treatment that changed the way I understood scar tissue relationships, opposing forces, and treatment order. We'll introduce the terms and look at how reversals, transfers, prime mover systems, and psoas lines begin fitting together within the PPS framework, and why understanding those relationships can change the way we approach complicated pain patterns.
And here's what I particularly want you to understand: You don't have to practice PPS to begin using many of these principles.
Regardless of the bodywork technique or clinical approach you use, you can establish a consistent process for documenting pain, tracking treatment outcomes, measuring changes, and allowing those results to guide your next decision.
PPS is the system I developed to understand and work with complicated pain patterns, but tracking pain levels is what taught me how to recognize what was actually working. And that's something any massage therapist can use in their own treatment room, regardless of the techniques they practice.
Because ultimately, just because you use a technique doesn't mean you've validated the treatment. The client's response to that treatment is what validates it. And when we're working with people in pain, our goal is to reduce that pain. That's what we're measuring.
PPS is much more about what you think than what you do with your hands.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 — Introduction: Why massage therapy needs a framework
04:31 — The overflowing toolbox and the shotgun effect
09:08 — How PPS developed through repeated observations
13:54 — What a pain management framework needs to answer
20:58 — Mapping pain and recognizing recurring patterns
30:13 — Documenting changes and using pain levels
37:22 — Treatment validation: Comparing expected and actual results
39:40 — Pain hierarchy and treatment priorities
49:14 — Reversals, transfers, prime movers, and psoas lines
51:38 — The SI joint experience that changed Amy's understanding
61:06 — Treatment frequency and helping clients track progress
65:48 — Watching pain patterns change over time
70:30 — The future of PPS education and YouTube resources
Learn More About Pain Patterns & Solutions
I'm continuing to develop and update my PPS educational programs, and I'm beginning to share more of my pain management teaching and hands-on demonstrations on YouTube.
Explore PPS videos and educational resources:
Visit Amy Bradley Radford on YouTube
You can also explore my continuing education classes, coaching, and other resources at amybradleyradford.com
