Dr Valentina Buscemi qualified as a Physiotherapist in Italy in 2006 and is now a Chartered Physiotherapist registered with the Health and Care Professions Council in the UK. She has always been deeply passionate about understanding the science behind pain and finding ways to help patients live a better life that isn't defined by it.
In 2013, she completed an MSc in Neurorehabilitation at Brunel University London, with a dissertation exploring living with neuropathic pain after spinal cord injury. She then pursued the neurophysiology of pain further, earning a Doctorate at Western Sydney University in Australia in 2018, focused on the role of stress and cortisol in the transition from acute to chronic non-specific low back pain.
Following her PhD, she dedicated her career exclusively to working with patients with chronic pain. She has since trained extensively in the psychosocial factors of pain and cognitive-behavioural approaches to pain management, including Psychologically Informed Physiotherapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for chronic pain, and courses via the UK Physiotherapy Pain Association (PPA), of which she is a member. Between 2019 and 2021, she worked as a Specialist Physiotherapist in the NHS at one of the UK's national Pain Management Units, at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Hospital, where she trained in ACT for pain.
More recently she has broadened her focus to chronic stress, health and pain, integrating body-mind models and techniques including Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) informed practice, Applied Polyvagal Theory in Therapeutic Yoga, and Integrated Somatic Trauma Therapy.
Can be consulted for
- Widespread pain and fibromyalgia syndrome
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Phantom limb pain
- Long COVID syndrome with fatigue and/or diffuse pain
- Persistent musculoskeletal pain, including non-specific low back and neck pain
- Neuropathic pain
- Persistent post-surgical and post-traumatic pain
- Persistent headaches and orofacial pain
- Visceral pain