Measuring Change in Tennis Elbow: What the NPRS, PRTEE, and TEFS Actually Tell You

Physical therapists and physical therapist assistants who treat elbow and forearm pain in outpatient orthopedic settings and who use patient-reported outcome measures to document change.

Licensed physical therapists and physical therapist assistants in outpatient orthopedics, sports, hand therapy, and occupational health settings. Physical therapist assistants participate under the direction of the supervising physical therapist, who retains responsibility for evaluation, diagnosis, and the plan of care.

Intended audience

Physical Therapy

Level

Intermediate

Delivery format

Online, asynchronous, self-paced course: interactive reading with audio or video, and a scored post-test.

Based on

This course reports on a single peer-reviewed article and introduces no claim the article does not support.

Young I, Dunning J, Mourad F, Escaloni J, Bliton P, Fernández-de-Las-Peñas C. Clinimetric analysis of the numeric pain rating scale, patient-rated tennis elbow evaluation, and tennis elbow function scale in patients with lateral elbow tendinopathy. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, 2025. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. Secondary analysis of a multicenter randomized clinical trial registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03167710); the original trial was approved by the ethics committee at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain.

Scope note

Everything reported here comes from that one article. Where the article compares its results with earlier work, those comparisons are presented as the authors made them. Nothing in this course is a treatment recommendation from The ConEd Solution.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

1. Describe the patients, the treatment setting, and the follow-up point at which the numeric pain rating scale, the patient-rated tennis elbow evaluation, and the tennis elbow function scale were evaluated in this study.
2. State the meaningful clinically important difference and the minimal detectable change values the authors reported at three months for each of the three measures, along with the range of each scale.
3. Distinguish between the level of test-retest reliability the authors observed and the level of responsiveness they observed, and explain what the authors concluded from that combination.

1. Start Here: course overview, objectives, and how to earn credit
2. Podcast: Three Tennis Elbow Outcome Measures, Put to the Test (about nine minutes)
3. Why Lateral Elbow Tendinopathy Needed Better Outcome Data
4. Who Was Studied and Where the Data Came From
5. How the Researchers Decided Who Had Improved
6. What the Three Measures Showed at Three Months
7. Limits of the Analysis and What the Authors Took From It
8. Key Takeaways
9. Post-test and course evaluation

Quinn Millington, PT, DPT, ECS is the instructor of record: the licensed clinician who reviewed this course and signed off on it. The name and credentials print on the certificate.

Disclosures. This course was developed by The ConEd Solution, which has a financial interest in its sale. No outside funding or sponsorship was received. The instructor of record has no affiliation with the authors of the source publication or their institutions.

This course awards 0.5 contact hours (30 min). How you earn them:

1. Complete the course. Every lesson, in order.
2. Pass the post-test. Score 80% or higher. Retakes are allowed.
3. Complete the evaluation. A short form rating each learning objective and the course.
4. Download your certificate. It is issued on completion and stays available in My Account.

The episode time is its measured length. Reading, post-test and evaluation times are estimates.

This course is designed to satisfy the quality requirements state boards set for continuing education. Requirements vary by state, and confirming that a course fits your renewal is up to you. Each state’s own acceptance statement is in the credit panel on this page.

1. This course reports on a single peer-reviewed article and introduces no claim the article does not support.
2. Young I, Dunning J, Mourad F, Escaloni J, Bliton P, Fernández-de-Las-Peñas C. Clinimetric analysis of the numeric pain rating scale, patient-rated tennis elbow evaluation, and tennis elbow function scale in patients with lateral elbow tendinopathy. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, 2025. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. Secondary analysis of a multicenter randomized clinical trial registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03167710); the original trial was approved by the ethics committee at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain.
3. Scope note
4. Everything reported here comes from that one article. Where the article compares its results with earlier work, those comparisons are presented as the authors made them. Nothing in this course is a treatment recommendation from The ConEd Solution.