1 Before you use it
What it is
Six clinician-rated observations in relaxed standing — talar head palpation, curves above and below the malleoli, calcaneal inversion/eversion, talonavicular bulge, medial arch congruence, and forefoot abduction/adduction.
Each scored −2 to +2, giving a total from −12 (highly supinated) to +12 (highly pronated).
When to reach for it
Tibialis posterior tendinopathy, sinus tarsi syndrome, plantar fasciopathy and medial tibial stress syndrome — the presentations where the medial column is part of the story.
Score it before you trial a wedge or an orthosis, so the trial has a baseline.
2 Giving it
Scoring
Total −12 to +12. Score both feet. Negative is supinated, positive is pronated, around 0 to +5 is the broadly normal range.
Standardise the position: relaxed bilateral stance, arms by the side, looking straight ahead, after two or three marching steps to settle.
What it doesn’t measure
Dynamic function. A foot posture in standing is not what the foot does at midstance under load — watch them walk and run.
And it does not predict injury on its own.
Repeat it
3 Reading the score
Interpreting it
Normative values by age exist (Redmond et al. 2008). No values are printed here — look them up rather than working from memory.
Foot posture is a descriptor, not a diagnosis. A pronated foot in someone with no symptoms needs nothing. Its clinical use is as a hypothesis for load distribution that you then test — which is exactly the in-room wedge test the sinus tarsi page teaches.
Is the change real?
On placement
Tibialis posterior tendinopathy. FPI-6 +8 on the symptomatic foot, +5 on the other, at intake. Twelve weeks later the symptomatic foot reads +7.
Read it as a 1-point change is inside the 1.58–1.82-point MDC, so posture did not measurably change — and it was never meant to. The FPI describes; it is not an outcome. What matters is the 3-point side-to-side difference at intake, which is a hypothesis about load to test, not a finding.
Do stop re-scoring it. Track the tendon with a single-leg heel-raise count and the pain on it, and use the posture only to decide whether a wedge trial is worth running.
Student trap. Treating a pronated score as a problem to correct. It's a hypothesis about load, and the wedge trial is what tests it.
Official source: licensing.leeds.ac.uk. We don't host the form.
This is a learning tool. It does not diagnose patients and does not replace your clinical educator.
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CliniStudy is in beta. One tap is enough — it decides what gets fixed first.