A clinical pathway of care for whiplash

This Specialist Resources portal has been developed to assist the assessment, prognosis and management of people with whiplash injury and at medium to high risk of poor recovery.                 

The clinical pathway of care for whiplash encompasses risk stratification by a Clinical Prediction Rule (CPR) and matched treatment strategies dependent on the assessed risk level. 

As part of Whiplash Navigator, primary health professionals have been made aware of the Australian Guidelines for the management of acute whiplash-associated disorders.

These recommend that:

• patients assessed as low risk receive up to 3 sessions of care with their primary health professional.
• patients assessed as medium to high risk receive a referral to specialist care for targeted treatments that address presenting physical and psychological factors with frequent monitoring of pain and disability scores.

As a specialist in the management of patients assessed as medium to high risk, we are asking you to:

• assimilate information received from a patient’s primary health professional and your own additional assessments
• identify physical and psychological factors that may impact the patient’s recovery.

Using the available information, you can formulate a patient-centered treatment plan, with specific goals set over a realistic recovery timeline.

You are encouraged to work in a collaborative manner with the patient’s referring primary health professional in all aspects of patient management.

In liaison with the referring primary health professional, you can prescribe an appropriate care pathway to guide the management of a patient at a medium to high risk of recovery from whiplash.