Draft:Jenny McConnell

• Comment: In accordance with Wikipedia's Conflict of interest guideline, I disclose that I have a conflict of interest regarding the subject of this article. Andym64 (talk) 08:16, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

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This page is about the Australian physiotherapist. For the Australian middle-distance runner who competed as Jennifer McConnell, see Jenny Orr.

Jenny McConnell AM
Born	Jennifer Sue McConnell
Occupation	Physiotherapist
Known for	McConnell taping technique
Awards	Member of the Order of Australia (2009)

Jennifer Sue McConnell AM, known as Jenny McConnell, is an Australian physiotherapist. She developed the McConnell taping technique, a method of patellar taping used in the conservative management of patellofemoral pain.

The technique was first described in a 1986 paper in the Australian Journal of Physiotherapy. Where anterior knee pain had generally been treated with quadriceps strengthening, McConnell argued that the position of the kneecap itself could be corrected with rigid tape, and that the resulting pain relief was what made retraining possible. The claim attracted sustained research attention and has since been tested in randomised trials and systematic reviews.

McConnell was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2009 for service to physiotherapy as a practitioner and researcher. She is a Fellow of the Australian College of Physiotherapists, received the FE Johnson Memorial Fellowship in 2006, and in 2023 became the first Australian and the first physiotherapist to receive the Patellofemoral Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Career

McConnell qualified with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Physiotherapy, and later took a Graduate Diploma in Manual Therapy and a Master of Biomedical Engineering. She has spent most of her career in private practice in Sydney.

The taping technique came out of an early job at a clinic on the Cumberland College campus. McConnell had been holding a patient's kneecap in a corrected position while they went up and down stairs, and found the knee pain stopped. Wanting the effect to outlast the treatment room, she went looking through the cupboard and came up with an old roll of athletic tape. It worked, she said later, precisely because the roll was old and had gone stickier than new tape, and it stayed on until the patient returned a week afterwards. The failures taught her as much as the successes; working out why some knees did not respond led her into questions of pain and joint loading that shaped the rest of her practice.

Workshops followed from 1987, in Australia and abroad. In 1991 they became the McConnell Institute, which trains physiotherapists, athletic trainers and other practitioners in the management of chronic musculoskeletal problems.

In 1987 McConnell sat on an extensor mechanism panel at an International Society of the Knee conference in Sydney, alongside a group of orthopaedic surgeons, where she presented her early work on adolescent knee pain and patellar taping. She was afterwards the first physiotherapist asked to join the International Patellofemoral Study Group, of which she remains a member.

She was admitted as a Fellow of the Australian College of Physiotherapists in 2009, as a Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist.

Research

The 1986 paper, "The Management of Chondromalacia Patellae: A Long Term Solution", set out a programme of biomechanical assessment of the lower limb, muscle retraining chosen to suit the individual patient, and patellar taping to control pain. Clinical writing since has generally called this the McConnell Program.

Several randomised controlled trials co-authored by McConnell, with Crossley, Bennell and others, reported short-term pain reductions when taping was combined with exercise. A 2014 systematic review and meta-analysis found moderate evidence for immediate pain relief where taping is tailored to the individual patient. Its authors also noted that little work has looked beyond the immediate term, and identified this as a research priority.

McConnell has applied the same reasoning to other joints. A 2009 study examined the effect of tape on glenohumeral rotation in elite junior tennis players; a 2011 paper, written with a group of biomechanics researchers, looked at shoulder taping in overhead athletes during a seated throw.

With Kim Bennell, she has written the chapter on conservative management of anterior knee pain across successive editions of the Springer textbook Anterior Knee Pain and Patellar Instability, edited by Vicente Sanchis-Alfonso. She is one of the authors credited on the fourth edition of Brukner and Khan's Clinical Sports Medicine.

Awards and recognition

• 2006: FE Johnson Memorial Fellowship, for outstanding achievement by an established researcher in the field of science and medicine in sport.
• 2009: Member of the Order of Australia (AM), for service to physiotherapy as a practitioner and researcher, particularly through the development of innovative musculoskeletal pain management techniques and treatment.
• 2009: Specialist Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist, Australian College of Physiotherapists.
• 2023: Lifetime Achievement Award, Patellofemoral Foundation.

Selected publications

• McConnell, J. (1986). "The Management of Chondromalacia Patellae: A Long Term Solution". Australian Journal of Physiotherapy 32 (4): 215–223.
• McConnell, J. (1996). "Management of patellofemoral problems". Manual Therapy 1 (2): 60–66.
• Grelsamer, R.; McConnell, J. (1998). The Patella: A Team Approach. Aspen Publications.
• McConnell, J.; McIntosh, B. (2009). "The Effect of Tape on Glenohumeral Rotation Range of Motion in Elite Junior Tennis Players". Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine 19 (2): 90–94.
• McConnell, J.; Bennell, K. (2011). "Conservative Management of Anterior Knee Pain: The McConnell Program". In Sanchis-Alfonso, V. (ed.) Anterior Knee Pain and Patellar Instability (2nd ed.). Springer.
• Brukner, P.; Khan, K. (2012). Brukner & Khan's Clinical Sports Medicine (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill. McConnell is among the authors credited on the cover.

See also

• Patellofemoral pain syndrome
• Athletic taping
• Australian Physiotherapy Association

Category:Living people Category:Members of the Order of Australia Category:Australian physiotherapists