Musculoskeletal Specialists celebrate 10 years serving the Los Alamos community. Courtesy/MSK
By Steve DiMarino
Musculoskeletal Specialists
This year marks the 10th anniversary of Musculoskeletal Specialists (MSK) serving the Los Alamos community. Your trust, encouragement, and support have allowed our clinic to grow over the past decade, and we are honored to have been part of this remarkable community.
Over the last 10 years, we have treated more than 4,000 people from Los Alamos, White Rock, and the surrounding communities. We’ve cared for scientists, engineers, teachers, ranchers, and entire families, treating everything from acute injuries to chronic conditions.
Musculoskeletal pain is the number one reason people visit a physician in the U.S. It affects how people work, exercise, sleep, and enjoy time with their families. It is hard to feel the joy of life when you are in pain. There is nothing more rewarding for us than to see someone return to hiking, gardening, playing with their grandchildren, competing in sports, or simply going through a day without pain. We are grateful that our clinic has been able to play a role in helping our neighbors return to joy and the activities they love.
From the day we opened our doors, our mission has been simple: provide the best hands-on musculoskeletal care possible. Over the years, we have had the privilege of helping people with everything from wellness and maintenance care, headaches, stiff necks, and back pain to athletes recovering from injuries and patients with chronic, complex conditions who had been searching for answers for years.
Healthcare is constantly evolving, and we believe our patients deserve clinicians who are committed to advancing the cutting edge of musculoskeletal care. Every patient who walked through our doors became part of that learning process. Sometimes a breakthrough came from an unexpected response to a treatment. Sometimes it came from a patient asking a thoughtful question. Sometimes it came from someone trusting us enough to try one more idea when nothing else had worked. Those moments challenged us to study harder, ask better questions, and think differently about the musculoskeletal system. The patient-practitioner relationship became the foundation for developing new ways of evaluating and treating musculoskeletal problems. That collaboration ultimately led to the development of an objective testing approach to manual therapy that we now call Tetherwork.
We couldn’t have developed any of this without a forward-thinking community here in Los Alamos, uniquely willing to grow and learn alongside us as we combined curiosity, clinical creativity, and scientific rigor. Rest assured, we wrote it all down.
We are excited to share that these 10 years of learning have culminated in a book, currently in its final editing stages, describing our unique approach to manual therapy. The first volume spans 750 pages of field-tested evaluation and treatment techniques and represents a decade of learning alongside the people of Los Alamos. We hope it gives hands-on practitioners practical tools to help more people recover from pain.
Today, our work extends well beyond the clinic. Through The MSK Academy, we teach continuing education courses for healthcare professionals who want to expand their skill set in treating musculoskeletal pain. We believe that when effective techniques for resolving pain are not shared, it is only the patients who lose. Our techniques, developed together with this community through tens of thousands of patient interactions over the past decade, are an open book, shared with anyone willing to learn.
Over this decade, we went from one person working in a small office with one patient visit a day to five doctors of Oriental Medicine and 12 MSK-trained manual therapists and exercise specialists providing care for more than 500 patient visits each month. We grew into a collaborative team, with each person contributing their own specialties and strengths to the care we provide.
None of this would have been possible without the support of the people of Los Alamos, local physicians (especially Trinity Urgent Care) and healthcare providers from Santa Fe and Albuquerque. But most of all, we’re grateful for the families and friends who have recommended our clinic over the past 10 years. Your confidence has allowed us to continue growing, learning, and giving back by teaching these techniques to other healthcare professionals.
Ten years ago, you welcomed a small clinic into your community. Nobody knew who we were, what we did, or even how to pronounce our name. You took a chance on an unknown clinic doing mysterious work and, instead of dismissing it, you sought to understand it. Thank you for trusting us with your health, for allowing us to learn alongside you, and for helping us discover better ways to care for people living with musculoskeletal pain. We are honored to continue that journey with you for many years to come.
