Louise Yow, Physiotherapist

Principal Physiotherapist
BSc (Hons) Physiotherapy, Queen Margaret University, Scotland, 2006 · Registered with the Allied Health Professions Council, Singapore

Louise is the second of the two clinicians who review every article on this site. Most of what you’ll read here about backs, necks, shoulders and desk posture comes from her side of the practice.

Training

Louise studied physiotherapy at Queen Margaret University in Scotland, graduating with honours in 2006, and returned to Singapore that year.

Twenty years across almost every setting

What stands out in Louise’s background is the range. Before settling into private practice she worked across:

  • Public hospitals: Changi General Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, and the National Heart Centre
  • The Ministry of Defence, working with a young, physically loaded population
  • Nursing homes, at the other end of the age range entirely
  • Private hospital care at Mount Elizabeth Orchard

That mix matters for a site like this one. Heat and self-management advice has to work for a 20-year-old recruit, a desk worker in their forties and an 80-year-old with thin skin and reduced sensation. Those are three different sets of rules, and Louise has treated all three.

You can see that range in the guides: safe heat at home for elderly parents and osteoporosis and spinal compression fractures at one end, heat and weight training and shin splints at the other.

What she treats

  • Musculoskeletal and sports physiotherapy
  • Back pain and neck pain
  • Spinal physiotherapy
  • Postural musculoskeletal conditions
  • Scar management

Louise speaks English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Articles from her side of the practice

Ergonomics, and the reason it keeps coming up here

Ergonomics to prevent back and neck pain is one of Louise’s stated areas, and it’s one of the questions she has with patients most often.

It’s also why so many articles on this site end up talking about screen height, break frequency and how long you’ve been in one position. Someone comes in for a stiff neck, gets warmth and treatment, feels better, and then goes back to the same desk for eight hours the next day. The heat helps. The desk is what decides whether they’re back in three weeks.

If you’ve noticed that our guides keep telling you to get up and move rather than just apply more heat, that’s Louise’s influence.

Now

Louise is a principal physiotherapist and a director of a multi-site physiotherapy and hand therapy group in Singapore, and still sees patients. She also handles the day-to-day of getting heat pads to the people who order them.

Outside work

Time with her children and husband, babywearing, and reading up on physiotherapy techniques she wants to get better at.


Read about Nigel Chua · About this site · All guides