The Johns Hopkins Rehabilitation Network Persistent Pain Fellowship is designed to improve a physical therapist’s ability to evaluate and treat patients who have chronic and persistent pain. Our goals are to grow the clinician’s confidence, knowledge and skills with managing these complex cases and to boost outcomes for these patients. Our program achieves this by combining a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary didactic education with one-on-one mentoring by a fellowship-trained and board-certified orthopaedic clinical specialist with over 13 years of experience in treating patients with chronic pain.

Duration: 13 months
Accreditation: Fellowship is not subject to ABPTRFE accreditation
Program start: July 15, 2024
Clinic locations: Johns Hopkins Musculoskeletal Center at Columbia
Prerequisites: applicant must be a graduate from an accredited physical therapy program licensed to practice in Maryland by the program start date, have at least 2 years of clinical practice experience in an outpatient orthopaedic setting and/or be a board-certified orthopaedic or sports clinical specialist and eligible to work in the United States without visa sponsorship by the PMR department.
How to apply: Prospective applicants can email Andrew Kunin ([email protected]) for more information. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

Program Features

Our program offers opportunities to collaborate and cross-train with fellows from other Johns Hopkins programs, as well as an opportunity to shadow programs’ physicians during clinical care and procedures. These programs include:

• Interventional Spine and Musculoskeletal Physician Fellowship
• Pain Medicine Physician Fellowship
• Postdoctoral Fellowship in Pain Psychology

Patient Care

• Clinical experience treating patients who have chronic and persistent pain in an outpatient setting

• 1,800 hours of independent clinical practice through direct patient care as a Johns Hopkins employee: on average at least 32 hours/week over 56 weeks
• 48 hours of shadowing pain medicine specialists and pain psychologists

Mentorship

• 150 hours of one-on-one clinical mentoring by a fellowship-trained and board-certified specialist

Instruction

• Teaching assistant experience for didactic modules as part of the orthopaedic physical therapy residency program
• 550 hours of multi-disciplinary didactic curriculum that includes synchronous and asynchronous learning including virtual and in-person classroom experiences
  • Weekend Classroom Courses: 250 hours
  • Orthopaedic modules: 100 hours (four three-day courses)
  • Stecco Fascial Manipulation Level 1 and 2 (60 hours)
  • Myopain Dry Needling Level 1 and 2 (70 hours)
  • IASTM Hawkgrips (8 hours)
  • Strength is a Skill (8 hours)
  • Weekly Lecture/Labs: 300 hours
    • Approximately two-three hours per week led by a physical therapist, medical doctor or psychologist (varying depending on topic/week)
  • Journal Club/Readings/Medbridge courses
    • Readings and video lectures assigned on various topics throughout the curriculum