ActiveCare Physical Therapy promotes education to our staff and our patients. We are a host facility for continuing medical education. We host courses for healthcare providers to learn advanced manual therapies. We occasionally need live patients as models to demonstrate techniques to the class. You may be asked to be a participant in the continuing education course. You have the choice to participate or not. It is voluntary and there is no compensation. If you decide to accept, you will be informed of what to expect, sign a waiver from the specific course and be used as a model to demonstrate the efficacy of the manual therapy techniques.

Clinical Education Training Facility

ActiveCare Physical Therapy is a teaching facility. We are contracted with multiple Physical Therapy programs nationally and internationally. Our clinicians work as clinical instructors for physical therapy students. Student physical therapists are allowed to work directly with patients under the supervision of their clinical instructor. Students can carry their own caseload while they work alongside their clinical instructors. The students are typically in their final affiliations (most advanced internship) and have had direct patient experiences prior to becoming a student at our facility. They are educated in our holistic practice philosophy and are highly capable of treating patients on their own. You may be treated by a student physical therapist at ActiveCare Physical Therapy. We will always get your consent if you are on the student’s schedule.

Maitland Australian Physiotherapy Seminars (MAPS) Faculty

Dr. Karena Wu joins the esteemed ranks of the Maitland Australian Physiotherapy Seminars (MAPS) faculty. MAPS is a worldwide advanced manual therapy continuing medical education seminars series that highlights the work of Australian physiotherapist, Geoffrey Maitland. Dr. Wu worked under Dr. Chris Showalter in 2003 at his Australian Physiotherapy Clinics in NYC and her office ActiveCare Physical Therapy in NYC and Mumbai has been a host facility for their continuing education courses since 2012.

The Maitland Australian Approach involves critical reasoning, Geoff Maitland’s ‘comparable sign’ with test-retest assessments and skilled joint mobilizations. The Maitland Approach highlights the textbook knowledge that a physical therapist comes to the table with and the patient that they have in front of them. It is a very active and interactive treatment style that changes a patient’s presentation almost immediately. Both the patient and the therapist can see, hear, and feel change.

Dr. Wu has taught MAPS courses in NYC and in the ActiveCare PT Mumbai clinic since 2019. Courses are a hybrid learning environment with 70% laboratory practice. Students complete their coursework and learn extremely valuable hands on skills and clinical reasoning that they can apply on their patients immediately. This treatment approach has an extremely high success rate and teaches clinicians to think more laterally and outside the box.

Spidertech Kinesiology Tape: Director of Education

As the previous Director of Education for SpiderTech, Karena was in charge of development of online, webinar and classroom education. Her role was to increase medical professional awareness, education and sales.

Kinesiology tape is one of the best new adjunct therapies. The tape has been around for decades and came into popular demand after the 2008 Olympics. It is a continuous type of therapy that can help reduce pain, help speed up tissue healing, help fluid movement and help muscle activation during therapeutic exercise. It can also be used to enhance performance.

It is important that the tape stay on for up to 5 days. Therefore, it is important to use a high quality tape that is not irritating and does not have early peel off. Clinical application skills are crucial as well. If the proper skin preparation is not performed, you can have both increased irritation as well as early peel off. SpiderTech offers kinesiology tape from the original Japanese manufacturer.