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It remains to be seen if Wicked will dominate culture in the coming weeks as it did this time last year, but since you lot made the mistake of enjoying/tolerating my Defying Gravity musings back then, here I am once again with a witchifying editorial.

I’m in a rather ponderous, reflective and mushy mood which usually needs no explanation but by the end of this you’ll understand that I have a decent reason for once. Said mood has me reminiscing about how incredibly fortunate I have been to work with the best and brightest in the industry. For them to have given their time to our shared cause and allow me to become the poor man’s Oprah Winfrey despite a criminal lack of specific expertise! More in-person events and meetings have led to more drinks and dinners which have led to more drunken reminiscing with colleagues who have become dear and loyal friends. 12 years is a while… I started Physio Matters in 2013 aged 25 but because it has flown by it is sometimes easy to forget what has changed/evolved/matured or deteriorated/lessened/regressed depending on who you ask. But regardless of how charitable the analysis is, one thing is for sure, the influence of people on me and my work has been profound.

🎼 I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason. Bringing something we must learn and we are led to those who help us most to grow, if we let them. 🎶

It would be ambitious to find specific reasons for the various crucial people who have entered my professional and personal life but there are some who so obviously provide calm, stability and assurance through reliability, loyalty and kindness. They’re often embodied in a different force to those who bring creative, exciting and fun energy but on occasion special people can be all of the above. Even rarer, some people provide a constant in your life as a friend, colleague and inspiration. One such person is MSKMag editor Felicity Thow who is approaching 20 years of toleration. If there is no further description of our relationship as ‘friendship’ in this piece it will be because it is disputed and she has edited it to describe us as ‘distant acquaintances’ and ‘colleagues’ to avoid over-association…

Alongside many other influential contributors that I am delighted to call acquaintances, when it comes to Flic it’s impossible to objectively weigh up their contributions, but fortunately that’s not necessary. We’re all mosaics with elements of our character and behaviour coloured by experiences which are shaped by the people we encounter and form relationships with. When we analyse particular people, projects or careers it would be mad to not recognise both the nature and nurture that influenced the individuals. Crazier still would be to underestimate the contributions of individual talent and the culture in which that can flourish or be restricted. There are lots of inherent balancing acts here, including the recognition that we are often standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before us, without letting that fact minimise our own achievements. Taken too far, this recognition can humble us into thinking we’re ONLY lucky passengers without any semblance of agency.

In this issue we celebrate two years of MSKMag which I am extremely proud of and know what it has taken to make it successful. But I assure you that it is not performative humility for me to recognise that it has been the contributions of many excellent people who have made it such a fun project and much-loved publication. To name a few, my wife Charlotte’s eye for detail, design and operational strategy means we’ve never missed the 1st of the month with a glossy mag, our staff writers Sue Julians, Tom Jesson, Claire Robertson, Jo Turner and Jonathan Bell have set the standard for the bravery and impact we wanted to achieve and our 100+ authors have proven that a monthly periodical can transcend professional boundaries - against the odds - in service of best MSK practice.

Well this has ended up being far more Oscar-speechy than I intended but the news is that this will be my last issue as Editor in Chief and I will be handing over the baton to my good acquaintance Felicity in the new year! I’ll still be involved behind the scenes and helping to curate the content as Editorial Director. Rest assured, MSKMag will remain a crucial part of the Physio Matters media and education offering. It also means I can focus my attention on a number of game-changing innovations in the new year, including a huge return-to-form for my first born; The Physio Matters Podcast which Farouk and Fran have been doing brilliant work on.

BUT FIRST this month’s MSKMag finishes the year and my tenure as Editor in Chief with a flourish! For me it’s an exciting combination of long time collaborators and new-found starlets! In the long-suffering acquaintance column we have the wonderful Karli Gibson with an excellent piece reflecting on the rehabilitation of REAL people in the harsh realities of REAL work. Giles Hazan also returns to discuss the diagnostic lookouts and management challenges in patients with neurodiversity and hypermobility. Cameron Tudor wrote a brilliant clinical piece on OA earlier in the year but is also a favourite thinker of mine when it comes to commercial factors affecting our industry; this month he explains how ownership matters. Now to the newcomers: David Evans is an osteopath and researcher who has been around long enough (whilst remaining wise enough) to repeat his ‘state of LBP care’ survey 20 years later! He pursues the question; ‘what has changed in 20 years’. And finally Dom Smith explains how the contentious subject of diagnostic ultrasound needn’t be contentious! PANIC NOT! I haven’t forgotten our longest serving staff writer Glen O’Humeral who once again seeks to get us cancelled with his/her take on ‘Unreasonable Adjustments’. I hope you enjoy this Mag and have enjoyed all 24 of our issues even half as much as I have enjoyed making them and thank you all so much for your feedback. You’re another group of people who I have the absolute privilege of working with and like all those aforementioned:

🎼Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good. 🎶