Free online courseShoulder assessment

Course Description

Accurate shoulder assessment can be the difference between treating symptoms and solving the true source of pain. This free online course strengthens your ability to examine the shoulder with a clear, repeatable process that supports safe decision-making in physiotherapy and other health settings. You will learn how to move from first impressions to confident clinical reasoning, so your findings lead naturally into a focused plan.

The training guides you through a full assessment flow, starting with observation and postural clues, then progressing through palpation and structured movement testing. You will practice interpreting what you see and feel, and you will refine how you assess active and passive range of motion so that irritability, quality of movement, and symptom behavior inform what you do next. Resisted testing is approached as a practical way to explore contractile tissue involvement, build hypotheses, and choose appropriate next steps.

To help you distinguish common shoulder presentations, the course introduces widely used orthopedic tests for the AC joint, instability, rotator cuff integrity, impingement patterns, labral involvement, and biceps-related conditions. Rather than relying on memorization, you will focus on why a test is selected, what a meaningful response looks like, and how results should be weighed alongside the rest of the examination. This makes it easier to avoid overtesting, reduce false confidence, and stay patient-centered when symptoms are complex or overlapping.

Throughout the course you will reinforce learning with targeted questions and exercises that check understanding and improve retention. By the end, you should feel more comfortable performing a complete shoulder evaluation, documenting findings, and communicating your clinical rationale clearly. Whether you are a student building foundations or a clinician refreshing core skills, this course helps you deliver more consistent assessments with greater confidence.