Jared Powell
RESIDENT SPECIALIST
“For as long as my memory “reliably” informs me I’ve wanted to be a physiotherapist. This
may be an oft-repeated claim, but in my case, very true. You see one of my best friends
growing up had a dad who was the QLD Maroons state of origin team physio and this
seemed like a sweet gig! On reflection, perhaps I wanted a reasonable excuse to watch
football for free (if I wasn’t on the field competing that is) because I’m sure the naivety of
my 6 year old brain couldn’t grasp exactly what a physio was or what they did.
Whilst I grew and (partially) matured over the next 15 years the concept of being a physio
never left me. It was with luck, or destiny, that I happened to excel and enjoy sport and
science at school, making physiotherapy a very appropriate career choice.
Upon entering physio school, I quickly developed an all-consuming passion for the
profession (that remains) and I was fortunate to win some academic awards (which,
disappointingly, no one cares about 10 years later).
My career after becoming a fully-fledged physio has been exclusively in private practice and
I have now amassed well over 20,000 consultations. Over the last 5 years, I have found
myself inexorably drawn back to academia and teaching, due to an unrelenting passion for
“figuring out” that pesky shoulder pain that won’t go away. This led to the commencement
of a PhD at Bond University exploring shoulder pain and the advent of starting an education
company that runs shoulder physiotherapy workshops to health care workers all over the
world.
I now see primarily shoulder pain patients, and given it is the 3 rd most common ailment of
the body, this keeps me exceedingly busy. My mission is to modernize how we (health care
workers) care for people with shoulder pain, using only the most robust of scientific
methods, and to slow (hopefully stop) the spread of misinformation about shoulder pain.
Outside of the nerd zone, I am a husband and father, I have an occasionally unhealthy
obsession with all sports, but I particularly love surfing, golf and strength training.”