All clinicians know the challenge and opportunity that comes with tailoring clinical decisions to the person in front of you. While it's helpful to have clinical practice guidelines to give you a starting point and to reduce unwarranted variation in practice, of course every patient is different!

Today, Dr Trevor Lentz (Duke University) explains the concept of clinical phenotyping, which is another way of identifying patterns in your clinical practice, and guiding your clinical decisions.

Clinical phenotyping has been suggested as a way of tailoring musculoskeletal care in practice, although its implementation in practice has been patchy - Dr Lentz explains some of the reasons why.

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RESOURCES

Psychological phenotyping in osteoarthritis: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/josptopen.2025.0177

OSPRO yellow flags tool: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2016.6487

Clinical framework for screening yellow flags: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2021.10570

STarT MSK research programme review: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37490570/