Meet Dr. David Smelser, PT, DPT, OCS and Dr. Austin Kercheville, PT, DPT, OCS—two very busy Board-Certified Specialists in Orthopaedic Physical Therapy. We're here to help you pass the OCS on a tight schedule like we did. In this episode, we introduce ourselves and give you a few tips to get you started with your study plan.

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A large number of exam takers who fail to pass the OCS exam report that the section on research was one of their lowest-scoring sections. Dr. David Smelser discusses research basics as well as statistics and important values you will need to memorize to ace the research portion of the exam. In this episode, David covers levels of evidence, types of variables, p-values and alpha levels, type I and type II errors, effect sizes, Cohen's kappa, and likelihood ratios. And just to keep things interesting, these values are reinforced with real data from studies that could be relevant for the exam.

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Dr. David Smelser discusses psychological pitfalls of human research, including the placebo, nocebo, Hawthorne, John Henry, and Pygmalion (also called "Rosenthal") effects and some ways to mitigate them.

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Dr. David Smelser introduces the 2012 low back pain Clinical Practice Guideline and covers the sections on prevalence, risk factors, and clinical courses. A couple case studies reinforce how this information might be used on the OCS exam.

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How is the OCS going to approach low back pain differential diagnosis and red flags? Dr. David Smelser discusses low back pain red flags using the CPG as well as a recent JOSPT article by Finucane et al. You can bet your bottom dollar this will be on the exam.

Find the Finucane article at https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2020.9971.

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Use code FIELDGUIDE for 40% off a MedBridge subscription.

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With the lumbar spine comprising 20% of the OCS exam, knowing both Fritz's 2007 treatment-based classification system and Alrwaily's 2016 update is essential to passing the exam. Dr. David Smelser breaks down these systems and includes a case study at the end.

Find these articles at our helpful resources page.

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As we wrap up the 2012 low back pain CPG by covering the treatment section, David discusses two topics the clinical practice guideline doesn't cover well: lumbar stenosis (as well as how to distinguish it from intermittent claudication) and how to bias nerve tension testing for various branches of the sciatic nerve nerves.

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Use code FIELDGUIDE for 40% off a MedBridge subscription.

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Guest host Dr. Kim Richards, PT, DPT, OCS helps go through some practice questions on low back pain. Like the OCS, these questions are case-based with a couple surprise twists. See how well you've been learning your lumbar spine material by testing your knowledge on these questions.

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Find more resources and subscribe to practice questions at PhysioFieldGuide.com.