Physiotherapy Congress 2025 - 13. - 15 March

The Physical Therapy Congress 2025 brings together professionals from all over the country to three days of professional replenishment, research dissemination and networking. With a total of 58 different program entrances, the event offers a wide range of lectures, panel debates, workshops and poster presentations. Several from the deacon home hospitals participate - both as audience and with their own posts. The title of Congress is, so we move society.

Project manager Dora SIF Oskarsdottir says that the goal is to gather 900 physiotherapists at The Qube - Clarion Hotel Oslo Airport , where they can immerse themselves in professional development and new research in physiotherapy. The people registered represent different parts of the health service from all over the country.

Congress is arranged every three or fourth years, last in 2015, 2018 and 2022 , and this year also Diakonhjemmet Hospital is well represented with several speakers:

• Lars Martinsen , a doctoral fellow and physiotherapist, presents findings from the Digioa study , a randomized controlled study on digital training follow-up vs. Guided exercise therapy for patients with hip and knee arthritis. He also participates with a poster presentation.
• Randi Sørland and Unni Marthinsen from the Learning and Mastery Center hold a workshop on health skills , where participants get a practical introduction to the Teach-back method , an approach to strengthen patients' understanding and self-mastery.
• Rikke Helene Moe will lead a panel debate.
• Kristine Røren Nordén , Marius Nøren and Tuva Moseng participate with posts and post presentation respectively. You can read with them in the further text:

Kristine Røren Nordén

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

I participate in two sessions at the Physiotherapy Congress 2025.

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

It is followed by a panel debate where I participate with physiotherapists Kari Bjørnstad from St. Olav and Øyvind Erås from Hans & Olav Physiotherapy. The panel debate is led by Rikke Helene Moe.

On Saturday, March 15, I 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 can these affect physiotherapy practices?

In the session about the value of testing physical shape, I illuminate why aerobic capacity and muscle strength are so important to our health. Furthermore, as physiotherapists, we should regularly test aerobic capacity and muscle strength- because there are good goals on general physical health. It is an excellent way to follow changes over time in the individual patient. Such measurements allow us to optimize training dosage to the individual patient to a greater extent.

In the session in which I present findings from the Exeheart study, we point out that in this RCT, where the training was performed with physiotherapists in the primary health service, high -intensity training was safe and efficient, and the effect persisted after the intervention itself was completed.

In addition to noticeably better aerobic capacity, we saw that there was no increase in disease activity as a result of high -intensity training, but rather a tendency to lower disease activity in those who had trained with high intensity.

3. How do you imagine that your findings can be implemented in clinical practice or affect patient care?

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

Findings from the Exeheart study hope I can help secure physiotherapists that high -intensity training is safe and feasible, even when it is carried out outside the specialist health service.

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 dose training for this patient group with slightly higher intensity as we know that it gives better results on aerobic capacity.

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

Yes, absolutely! We constantly want to find simple and at the same time precise measurement methods to measure physical shape that can be widely implemented in the primary health service. There is one measurement tool we are very curious about, but we depend on testing out in a study before we can recommend it for further use.

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

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

Most of all, I look forward to sessions with talented speakers where I can sit back and be inspired. Furthermore, I hope to meet colleagues and make new contacts- both those who work with research and in the clinic.

Tuva Moseng 

She will talk in a session called "Argrosenytt". Her my contribution is about "treatment recommendations for hip and knee arthritis. What's new? " She herself has 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 can these affect physiotherapy practices?

The goal is to update the audience on what is the latest in recommended treatment measures for knee and hip osteoarthritis. If this is followed in clinical practice it can affect pain, function and quality of life in a positive direction for a large group of patients

2. How do you imagine that your findings can be implemented in clinical practice or affect 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 plan for further research or projects based on this work?

We continue work on spreading treatment recommendations and latest news in the field of osteoarthritis

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

It is exciting to hear about what is going out out there. Physical therapy is a very broad subject, and I hope to be inspired by hearing about high quality research and learning something new about how physiotherapy can be made and utilized patients with different issues.

Marius Nøren

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 examined 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 overall theme is the strong association between aerobic capacity and the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death. It is suggested that we should measure patients' aerobic capacity to a greater extent than is the current practice.

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

2. What main findings or conclusions do you present, and how can these affect physiotherapy practices?

We examined the criterion validity of the submaximal fitness test, single-stage submaximal treadmill Walking Test (SST). We found that the test had moderate criterion validity at the group level, but that it had major random measurement errors at the individual level. In clinical practice, the test is therefore not suitable for measuring aerobic capacity in individuals with inflammatory joint disease.

• How do you imagine that your findings can be implemented in clinical practice or affect patient care?

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

• Do you plan 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 get inspiration for your own professional work through many different lectures and professional discussions.

Read more about the congress at PhysiotherapicRessen.no .