Amy F. Bailes, PT PhD is the Director of Physical Therapy Research at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and an Associate Professor in the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Rehabilitation, Exercise, & Nutrition Sciences. Her clinical work focuses primarily on the care of children with CP, while her research involves how physical therapy services are utilized, the use of measurement tools to treat CP, and novel CP interventions.

Dr. Bailes has worked as a pediatric physical therapist for the better part of four decades, but it was during her teenage years that she was first exposed to CP. After agreeing to babysit for a neighborhood family whom she didn’t know well, she realized after a few evenings that the baby, a nine-month-old boy, seemed delayed. After bringing it up with the family, they confirmed her guess: the baby had severe CP due to an infection during pregnancy. The young Amy Bailes didn’t end up babysitting for the family for long, but the chance encounter led her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from Indiana University. “I became very interested in how the brain worked and controlled movement,” said Dr. Bailes. “I learned that as a physical therapist, I could combine my interest in the brain with my love for physical activity and children.”

Throughout her career, she has seen the field of physical therapy evolve dramatically, especially for children with CP: “We’ve learned so much about caring for children with CP. It’s really changed. And that’s been pretty exciting.” Within pediatrics, Dr. Bailes’ experience has been expansive. She has worked in acute inpatient care, inpatient rehabilitation, and outpatient care, as well.

Dr. Bailes is also quite interested in physical therapy dosing, which covers the frequency, intensity, duration, and timing of administering physical therapy to patients. A recent study that she co-authored in Pediatric Physical Therapy entitled, “Documenting Physical Therapy Dose for Individuals with Cerebral Palsy: A Quality Improvement Initiative” describes how quality improvement activities were used to increase documentation of therapy dose in the patient’s electronic record of physical therapy. Detailed dose documentation is important to help us understand what treatments are effective and for whom. Dr. Bailes is actively working to spread standard documentation methods to other medical centers so that vital information can be collated and used to inform current practice.

Dr. Bailes is also passionate about developing closer relationships between clinicians, patients with CP, and their families, about “sharing information with families that can empower them to care for their child,” in her words. Part of why transparency and information-sharing is important to Dr. Bailes is because the field has not always prioritized openness. When the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) came into use, for example, it was common for clinicians to withhold a children’s classification from their family, on the basis that it might alarm them. This always struck Dr. Bailes as counterproductive: “It’s important—especially with a chronic condition like cerebral palsy—for the individual and the family to understand the condition. This information doesn’t really belong to us. It belongs to them.”

This is one of the reasons that Dr. Bailes initially became involved with the CP Research Network: “I like that CPRN is about breaking down barriers between researchers and families/individuals with CP to improve care and outcomes,” she said. Dr. Bailes is passionate not only about breaking down the barriers between professionals and families, but also between professionals in adjacent fields. The logic is straightforward: when specialists actively work together, everyone benefits. Strict separation between disciplines can be a problem in CP—information and context is inevitably lost as the patient bounces from one specialist to another—but Dr. Bailes is optimistic that things are moving in the right direction. Part of her optimism stems from the power of groups like the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine and their willingness to collaborate and treat from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Likewise with CPRN and its power to facilitate connections: “I have learned so much. I have become a better person, clinician, and researcher because of these relationships,” Dr. Bailes said. Currently, she coaches four quality improvement teams within CPRN. These four teams, respectively, are focused on:

1. improving care for adults,
2. improving the assessment of dystonia,
3. improving hip surveillance, and
4. decreasing intrathecal baclofen pump infections.

When asked what she most valued about her work, Dr. Bailes was already looking toward the future: “One of the most rewarding parts of my work is planting seeds for the next generation of researchers and clinicians to carry the work forward.”