Backstage Clinical Reasoning: The Framework
Session 3 | So You Want to Work Backstage?
When a performer approaches you backstage with pain and only a few minutes before curtain, where do you begin?
Backstage clinical decision-making requires a systematic approach that allows you to gather meaningful information, identify priorities, and make sound clinical decisions efficiently.
In this session, we'll introduce a practical clinical reasoning framework designed specifically for the backstage environment, helping you adapt your existing clinical skills to situations where time, space, and resources may be limited.
What You'll Learn
Establishing clinical priorities during brief backstage encounters
Conducting focused, efficient assessments
Identifying red flags and determining when referral or further evaluation is warranted
Making decisions about treatment, activity modification, and performance participation
Adapting treatment strategies to the resources and time available
Developing a repeatable approach to backstage triage and decision-making
Who Should Attend?
Physical therapists and third-year PT students looking to strengthen their clinical reasoning skills and apply them to backstage performing arts medicine.
Course Details
Format: Live virtual webinar
Duration: 90 minutes
Date and time: November 22, 2026 3:30-5:00pm Eastern
Registration: $65
Instructor: Marissa Schaeffer, PT, DPT, MBA and Brittney Mims, PT, DPT
Continuing education credits are not currently offered.
Planning to attend Sessions 4 or 5? This session provides the foundational framework required for participation in those sessions.
Curtain is approaching. A member of the cast is hurt. What do you need to know—and what do you do next?
This course introduces a practical framework for evaluating acute and overuse complaints backstage when time is limited. Participants will learn how to streamline the subjective history and objective examination, identify the information that matters most, and make thoughtful decisions about treatment, modification, referral, and return to performance.
At the center of the framework is one deceptively simple question: Is this performer safe to go on?
Format: Live virtual
Length: 90 minutes
Prerequisite: None
Date & Time: November 22 | 3:30–5:00 PM Eastern
Cost: $65
Instructors: Brittney Mims, PT, DPT and Marissa Schaeffer, PT, DPT, MBA, OCS, CSCS