Physiotherapy Congress 2025 - March 13 - 15

The Physiotherapy Congress 2025 brings together professionals from all over the country for three days of professional enrichment, research dissemination and networking. With a total of 58 different program items, the event offers a wide range of lectures, panel debates, workshops and poster presentations. Several from Diakonhjemmet Hospital are participating – both as listeners and with their own contributions. The title of the congress is, How we move society.

Project manager Dora Sif Oskarsdottir says that the goal is to bring together 900 physiotherapists at The Qube – Clarion Hotel Oslo Airport , where they can immerse themselves in professional development and new research within physiotherapy. The participants represent different parts of the health service from all over the country.

The congress is held every third or fourth year, most recently in 2015, 2018 and 2022 , and again this year Diakonhjemmet Hospital is well represented with several speakers:

• Lars Martinsen , PhD candidate and physiotherapist, will present findings from the DigiOA study , a randomized controlled trial of digital exercise monitoring vs. guided exercise therapy for patients with hip and knee osteoarthritis. He will also participate with a poster presentation.
• Randi Sørland and Unni Marthinsen from the Learning and Coping Center hold a workshop on health literacy , where participants receive a practical introduction to the Teach-back method , an approach to strengthening patients' understanding and self-management.
• Rikke Helene Moe will lead the panel debate.
• Kristine Røren Nordén , Marius Nøren and Tuva Moseng will participate with a presentation and poster presentation, respectively. You can read an interview with them in the following text:

Kristine Roren Nordén

1. Can you give a brief overview of the topic of your presentation at the Physiotherapy Congress 2025?

I am participating in two sessions at the Physiotherapy Congress 2025.

On Thursday, March 13, I will participate in the session 'Patients with rheumatic disease: What is the value of testing physical fitness in clinical practice?'. Here I will first give a 30-minute lecture on testing physical fitness - what are we testing, why should we test and how can we test.

This will be followed by a panel debate in which I will participate together with physiotherapists Kari Bjørnstad from St. Olav and Øyvind Erås from Hans&Olav Physiotherapy. The panel debate will be led by Rikke Helene Moe.

On Saturday, March 15, I will present findings from the ExeHeart study (WP4 in REMEDY) in an oral abstract session.

2. What main findings or conclusions do you present, and how might these impact the practice of physiotherapy?

In the session on the value of testing physical fitness, I highlight why aerobic capacity and muscle strength are so important for our health. Furthermore, we as physiotherapists should regularly test aerobic capacity and muscle strength - because they are good measures of general physical health. It is an excellent way to follow changes over time in the individual patient. Such measurements allow us to better optimize the training dosage for the individual patient.

In the session where I present findings from the ExeHeart study, we point out that in this RCT, where the training was carried out by physiotherapists in primary care, high-intensity training was safe and effective, and the effect persisted after the intervention itself ended.

In addition to noticeably better aerobic capacity, we saw that there was no increase in disease activity as a result of high-intensity exercise, but rather a trend towards lower disease activity in those who had exercised at high intensity.

3. How do you envision your findings being implemented in clinical practice or influencing patient care?

I hope that the session on testing physical fitness can help motivate us as physiotherapists to measure physical fitness in this patient group and that we are aware of which measurement methods we use and to what extent we can trust the results the different measurement methods give us.

I hope that findings from the ExeHeart study can help reassure physiotherapists that high-intensity exercise is safe and feasible, even when carried out outside of specialist healthcare.

We see that in clinical practice there is still some skepticism about how safe it is to train hard for this patient group. We hope our findings can help to ensure that training for this patient group is dosed with a slightly higher intensity as we know that it gives better results on aerobic capacity.

4. Do you have plans for further research or projects based on this work?

Yes, absolutely! We are constantly looking for simple and accurate methods to measure physical fitness that can be widely implemented in primary care. It is a measurement tool that we are very curious about, but we need to test it in a study before we can recommend it for further use.

Otherwise, we plan to conduct a study in which we look at what happens in the coronary arteries (the blood vessels that supply the heart muscle) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis when they exercise at high intensity over several months.

5. What do you think/hope to take home from the Physiotherapy Congress 2025?

I am most looking forward to sessions with talented speakers where I can sit back and be inspired. I also hope to meet colleagues and make new contacts - both those working in research and in the clinic.

Tuva Moseng 

She will speak in a session called "Arthritis News." Her contribution is about "Treatment recommendations for hip and knee osteoarthritis. What's new?" She herself has played an important role in the development of EULAR's new treatment recommendations for osteoarthritis.

1. What main findings or conclusions do you present, and how might these impact the practice of physiotherapy?

The goal is to update the public on the latest recommended treatment measures for knee and hip osteoarthritis. If followed in clinical practice, it could positively impact pain, function and quality of life for a large group of patients

2. How do you envision your findings being implemented in clinical practice or influencing patient care?

When physiotherapists are professionally updated, it can increase the quality of the treatment they offer in their practice, which in turn will benefit patients

3. Do you have plans for further research or projects based on this work?

We continue our work to disseminate treatment recommendations and the latest news in the field of osteoarthritis

4. What do you think/hope to take home from the Physiotherapy Congress 2025?

It's exciting to hear about what's going on out there. Physiotherapy is a very broad field, and I hope to be inspired by hearing about high-quality research and learning something new about how physiotherapy can be made available and useful to patients with different problems.

Marius Noren

1. Can you give a brief overview of the topic of your presentation at the Physiotherapy Congress 2025?

At the Physiotherapy Congress 2025, I will present findings from a study in which we investigated the criterion validity of a submaximal fitness test in patients with inflammatory joint disease. The study was conducted in connection with the larger ExeHeart study (Kristine Røren Nordén).

The overarching theme is the strong association between aerobic capacity and risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death. It has been suggested that we should measure patients' aerobic capacity to a greater extent than is currently the case.

This is especially true for patients with an underlying increased risk of cardiovascular disease, such as patients with inflammatory joint disease. Submaximal fitness tests can make measurement of aerobic capacity more accessible in clinical practice, but such tests require sufficient validation for the individual patient groups that will use them.

2. What main findings or conclusions do you present, and how might these impact the practice of physiotherapy?

We investigated the criterion validity of the submaximal fitness test, the Single-Stage Submaximal Treadmill Walking Test (SST). We found that the test had moderate criterion validity at the group level, but that it had large random measurement errors at the individual level. In clinical practice, the test is therefore poorly suited to measure aerobic capacity in individuals with inflammatory joint disease.

• How do you envision your findings being implemented in clinical practice or influencing patient care?

We hope this study helps to highlight the importance of measuring aerobic capacity in patients with inflammatory joint disease. However, knowledge of the measurement properties of different measurement tools is essential to be able to make clinical assessments on the right basis.  

• Do you have plans for further research or projects based on this work?

We want to publish an article based on this study.

• What do you think/hope to take home from the Physiotherapy Congress 2025?

I hope to gain inspiration for my own professional work through many different lectures and professional discussions.

Read more about the congress at fysioterapikongressen.no .