Physiotherapists

Learn more about the Physiotherapists team at Flex Health Therapy in Hobart.

Karrie Malan

Physiotherapist & Owner

Karrie is a dynamic physiotherapist with a real passion for helping people move freely, feel better, and understand their own bodies. She values spending time with patients, allowing her to offer personalised attention, thorough assessment and optimal treatment.

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After working for 15 years as a physio in private practices, her passion and enthusiasm for her work and helping her clients has only grown, and you can see the buzz she gets out of seeing them improve, and also reviewing more complex patient presentations with her physio colleagues and coming up with a plan together.

Karrie’s special interest areas include neck and shoulder pain, hip and lumbar issues.  These areas lend themselves to the art of observing, analysing and retraining movement patterns, where she incorporates her expertise in Clinical Pilates and exercise therapy, which she balances with hands on skills, including dry needling.  In the past few years she has particularly enjoying seeing "2nd opinion" clients to find the root cause of persistent issues.

Karrie is a Watson Headache®Certified Practitioner, having completed levels 1, 2 and 3 over the past 2 years.  She is excited about the seeing the effectiveness of treating both headaches and migraines using a unique and research based approach - the Watson Headache® Approach.  

There can be a large interplay between neck pain, posture, shoulder pain and arm pain.  Karrie enjoys the challenge of teasing out these injuries, and addressing each aspect of the problem step by step.  Combining thorough shoulder assessment with neurodynamic testing and exercise therapy means she can help track and explain symptoms that extend up into your neck or down into your arm, wrist or hand.

Similarly, hip pain, lower back pain and groin pain can sometimes become a complex picture to assess or treat as a physio.  She believes that understanding and explaining to patients how these puzzle pieces fit together empowers them to start changing habits and solving the underlying issues that are causing the pain.

With a keen interest in recreational running herself, Karrie really enjoys analysing and improving running technique and treating running related injuries, and she does most of our Running Screenings at FLEX.

Having worked in sports focused practices, alongside bootcamps, football and netball teams, Karrie enjoys the fast paced, decision driven world of sports physio, returning clients to sport quickly, and allowing them to play at their best.  

As an ex dancer herself, and with extra physio training in this area, Karrie treats many dancers.  She does our Pre-Pointe Dancing Screenings and understands the specific challenges that dancers face with their injuries.

She's also a bit of a nerd, attending lots of professional development courses, and reading physiotherapy journal articles . . . for fun.  

Karrie works part time as she juggles the joys (and challenges) of parenting  Jamie and Amelie.  She enjoys being outdoors, running, bushwalking, netball, pilates and keeping fit in her "spare" time.  

Karrie works 4 days, with Wednesdays off.

Stuart Nolan

Physiotherapist

Physiotherapist - Stu is an easy going, gentle natured, and highly experienced Physiotherapist with 22 years of experience in musculoskeletal private practice physio. Stu has completed his Watson Headache Approach level 2 training, and loves being able to help clients with persistent headaches, migraines and neck pain.

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His obvious passion for helping his clients, and his wealth of experience across both sports and spinal injuries, and post operative rehabilitation make him an asset to our team.  Stu has completed Watson Headache Approach Level 1 and 2, and loves helping headache and migraine patients feel better. Stu also has extensive experience with knee, ankle and hip patients, and loves sussing out shoulder issues too.

Stu is a keen multi-sport competitor, and loves helping sports people of all ages and levels of competition to achieve their goals and enjoy their sport.  This ranges from running biomechanics and injury rehabilitation to swimming, cycling and paddling.

He has competed in dragon boat racing for Australia, and has a particular interest in shoulder injuries, rehabilitation, and sorting out the tricky paddling related problems. Stu is always keen to help paddlers, kayakers and dragon boat racers not only deal with and recover from an injuries, but also look at technique to prevent this occurring, especially around the shoulders and lower back.

Stu's broad experience shows in his manual therapy skills, holistic approach, and the many tips and tricks he has up his sleeve.  We love learning from him and sharing ideas as a team.

Stu works 4 days, with Wednesdays off.

Michiel Van Straten

Physiotherapist

Physiotherapist - Michiel comes to us with a wealth of musculoskeletal and private practice experience, having worked in a sports and spinal private practice in Sydney for 9 years, and also in the Netherlands for several years before that. Michiel is a very "hands on" physio, and has a wide variety of tricks up his sleeve for releasing tightness and stiffness, and relieving their pain. It's easy to see why our patients love his cheeky sense of humour and positive attitude.

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Michiel (he goes by "Michael") is a very approachable, friendly and capable physiotherapist with a good sense of humor. He literally has a world of experience to offer.  Finishing his degree in the Netherlands in 1999, he started working straight away in a private practice. After working for 12 years in Europe he and his wife decided to move to Australia in 2011, so Michiel completed the laborious theoretical and practical exams to become registered as an Australian Physiotherapist. 23 years of experience and he still loves his job because it's so rewarding helping people move and feel better.

Michiel then worked for 9 years in Penrith, Sydney in a sports and spinal focused practice, working with touch football NSW, rugby players, and a variety of other sports. As a result Michiel has lots of experience in ACL and knee rehab, and ankle injuries, and also shoulder assessment, and post operative rehabilitation to help get clients back on track.

Michiel has done plenty of extra courses during this time, always keen to keep learning more and honing his craft, but has also really enjoyed training and mentoring new graduates, sharing his wide ranging knowledge, skills, and clinical decision making to help the next generation of physios.

During his time working here in Australia Michiel has continued upskilling, and particularly enjoyed taking courses in dry needling, kinesio taping, cervical spine and a temporomandibular joint (TMJ) courses. Patients with TMJ (jaw) disorders can have a whole range of symptoms like stiffness and pain around the joint, the feeling of ear pain, neck pain, headaches, clicking of the joint, pain when talking, eating, or not able to open the jaw properly.  Michiel's expertise fits in beautifully alongside our FLEX Headache Clinic as there is often overlap between neck and jaw conditions.

Overall, Michiel is a very good all-round physiotherapist who enjoys treating both acute injuries, and also more chronic musculoskeletal problems.  He is a very hands on physio with great manual therapy skills. During his spare time Michiel enjoys travelling, walking the dogs, swimming, going to the gym and watching sport, especially soccer, rugby league and tennis.  

Michiel works 4 days, with Fridays off.

Chloe Foster

Physiotherapist

Chloe is a local girl who is excited to be back here in beautiful Hobart. She studied Exercise Science first, and then a Doctorate of Physiotherapy at Bond University. She is now also studying for her pilates qualification, so you'll see her in many of our pilates MAT and TRIO classes. Chloe has found her passion for individualising care to each individual's needs and goals, an encouraging clients to enjoy movement and a healthy lifestyle in the long term.

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We are looking for a Physio with an interest in pilates to join our team.

Ida White

Physiotherapist

Ida loves using ConnectTherapy skills for assessing and  treating the whole biomechanical chain. She uses the Thoracic Ring Approach to assess how rib cage position and muscular control can affect shoulder or neck symptoms, or how hip position and function affects the spine above, as well as the knee and foot below. These skills are particularly helpful for persistent pain or tricky patients.

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Ida is a sweet and encouraging Physiotherapist who is originally from Finland. She and Karrie met each other at a ConnectTherapy course in Sydney years ago - so it's lovely to finally work together and use a ConnectTherapy toolkit of fancy biomechanical assessment and treatment tricks.

Since then Ida has worked for 3 years in a ConnectTherapy and pilates focussed private practice in Sydney, so she's very familiar with using pilates reformers, pilates equipment and running mat classes alongside her hands on skills and home exercises.

Ida is passionate about helping patients understand how their injuries, niggles and movement patterns are linked up and down the biomechanical chain, and helping them to solve the underlying cause.

Outside of work Ida has been very busy too - with two gorgeous young children keeping her busy.

Ida is working at FLEX on Mondays and Fridays.

Emma Sorbian

Oncology & Lymphoedema Physiotherapist

Emma is a highly experienced lymphoedema and oncology physio who recently returned to Hobart after working in oncology in WA for 15 years. Emma works Tuesdays and Wednesdays at FLEX.

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Emma is absolutely passionate about helping patients through their cancer journey with top quality care.

Having worked in the public system in a specialist oncology physiotherapy department for 15 years in Perth, she was keen to try to bring those skills into the private system to help streamline the process for patients, and prevent the waitlists that can unfortunately bank up in the public system and cause patients to wait longer than what is best practice. Emma can help you prevent or manage lymphoedema with advice, lymphatic drainage massage, garment measure and fitting and bandaging.

Emma also offers a pre-op screening service for patients who are about to undergo surgery - early intervention is always preferable where possible.

Emma works Tuesdays and Wednesdays (and an occasional sneaky Friday slot!)

Visit the experts at FLEX Health Therapy today

FLEX Health Therapy in Hobart provides exceptional Physiotherapy, including assessment and diagnosis, effective hands on therapy, and targeted exercise rehabilitation, looking after you from top to toe.

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