Who is Kate Markland?
Over the past 19 years Kate has worked as a Physiotherapist, starting her own clinic from scratch here in the UK. Kate is a leading clinician and one of the few to hold the international Postgraduate Diploma in Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy.
Now, through The Markland Clinic, Kate helps those struggling with pain or injury debunk the myths and understand how to their own pain without the need to see endless health practioners, so they can have the health they want escape mediocrity and live the lives they’ve always dreamed of.
My name is Kate Markland…
I’m a mum to Gabriel. I’m also the founder and of a Clinic which provides those suffering in pain with everything they need to get unstuck and understand how to treat themselves. I’ve started 4 clinics from scratch, and grown them all within a few years. In 2020 the clinic moved entirely online so it could help more people get painfree. Now, I spend my time helping other clinicians and clinic owners to help as many clients as possible.
Here’s some background on how I got this far
The ‘NHS’ Years
In 2002 I was fresh out of college and thought I was ready to heal the world. I quickly realised how little college had actually taught me. As a Junior Physiotherapist in the UK you spend time in lots of different hospital departments eg: Cardiac Surgery, Neurology, Care of the Elderly, Orthopaedics and so on. Every single one of those jobs was based on a ward and I sucked at ward work, critical illness was just not where I belonged.
One day my life changed when I was transferred to an outpatient clinic. I had a chance to help people suffering with back, neck and knee pain. During this placement it struck me if I asked x5 different colleagues how to treat the same patient with back pain I got x5 different answers!
I started to understand some of the challenges my mum and rowing friends had experienced when seeking answers and looking for cures to their pain from different professionals, everyone gave a different answer!
I felt treating back pain couldn’t be this variable. There has to be a more systematic and consistent way for addressing it. I spoke to a senior colleague I admired about this and he let me in to a secret….. “You are right, there is a very effective systematic method for addressing back pain”.
It turned out how he’d had specific post graduate training in “The McKenzie Method”, a scientifically proven system for assessing, diagnosing and treating back pain. Removing all the guess work!
At this point I was curious to find out more but still sceptical… if this system is so great why aren’t all clinicians using it, why weren’t we taught it at college and why aren’t the basic fundamentals of it common knowledge amongst back pain sufferers?
The Odysee
In 2004 I had a last minute chance opportunity to attend a 4 day McKenzie Method course on back pain. During those 4days pennies started to drop…. back pain wasn’t such a myth after all and there was a systematic logical approach to assessing, diagnosing and treating it.
Up to that point I had been treating back pain sufferers like you with a clinical tool box but no idea which tool to use when. And it might surprise you if I remind you this is not unusual. I started implementing what I had been taught, a systematic way of interviewing and listening to people suffering with back pain, to create a hypothetical diagnosis, test it, confirm it and treat it with the right tool.
It worked… and that began a 17 year odyssey of learning how to assess, diagnose and treat back pain.
The odysee has included advanced international training through a University of Otago, New Zealand and studying at a spine specialist clinic in the Hague, Netherlands.
The Big Leap
I was working for the UK’s National Health Service and becoming frustrated that we were not delivering the level of service to back pain sufferers that I had seen was possible and therefore those in pain were not getting the level of results that was possible for them to achieve.
I therefore decided to take the plunge and create my own clinic. Making the decision was the easy bit…
Many long hours, days and nights followed to make this vision become reality, we helped thousands of clients get free of pain and won numerous awards.
Within 4 years I had established x4 physiotherapy clinics. Clients did GREAT getting some excellent results, but we were still inviting clients to come back again and again to the clinic for treatment sessions, clients were struggling to manage their symptoms themselves!
Giving You The Secrets
Throughout Covid and the forced closure of the walk in clinic, I have continued to obsess about those suffering with back pain, as it hasn’t gone away, we havebeen living through a back pain epidemic for nearly a century now..
Recognising that many hands-on therapists will invite clients to come back again and again for their clinic for weekly massages, mobilisations or adjustments. I questioned if suffering from pain and lack of control over our own bodies and therefore dependency on medical practitioners to “fix us” is something we should all expect and accept? It does make sense that as a species that we have survived this long and now suddenly need weekly massages or adjustments?
Can it be true that our bodies are so weak that we need someone to put them “back into place” every 7 days?
And how can the 30mins of weekly therapy possibly counter all the other loads and activities we do in the remaining 167.5 hours of a week. It just doesn’t add up!
Is it more likely that we are doing something with our own bodies which makes us vulnerable to pain and injury? And if we could learn to use our bodies better we could stop the pain?
The “mystery” of pain is, in most cases, not all that mysterious.
I’ve figured out that now it is time to demystify the myth of back pain and show you directly the secrets of you how to master your spine anddebunk the myths!
