TENNIS ELBOWSEVERITY QUIZ FOR PADEL PLAYERS (PRTEE)
Padel elbow — the sport’s single most common overuse injury — is usually tracked by feel alone: “worse,” “better,” “about the same.” The Patient-Rated Tennis Elbow Evaluation (PRTEE) turns that into an actual number. Developed by Joy MacDermid at McMaster University and used in physiotherapy clinics worldwide, it separately scores your pain and your functional difficulty, then combines them into a single 0-100 score you can track over weeks. This calculator reproduces the validated 15-item scale exactly, with full citation — it gives you a score and what published research says about that range, never a diagnosis.
ITEMS — 5 pain items + 10 function items (6 specific activities, 4 usual activities), exactly as published
TOTAL SCORE RELIABILITY — test-retest ICC reported in the original validation study (Overend et al., 1999)
PADEL INJURY — elbow overuse pain is the most common injury type our own audience searches for and asks about
In short: the PRTEE scores your elbow on two things — pain (5 items, out of 50) and function (10 items, out of 50) — combined into a total out of 100, where lower is better. Rate all 15 items honestly based on the past week, and track your total score every couple of weeks to see if your rehab is actually working.
Why “It Feels Better” Isn’t Enough
The Problem With Tracking Elbow Pain By Feel
Ask most padel players how their elbow is doing three weeks into a rehab program and you’ll get “a bit better, I think.” That’s not useless information, but it’s not actionable either — you can’t tell from a vague impression whether your loading program is working, whether you’ve plateaued, or whether you’ve quietly gotten worse without noticing because you’ve unconsciously started avoiding certain shots. The PRTEE exists precisely to replace that vagueness with a number: separately scored pain and function, combined into a single comparable total, designed to be filled out repeatedly over the course of a recovery so you can see the actual trend line rather than guessing at it.
Why Pain and Function Are Scored Separately
A player can have relatively low pain but still struggle badly with grip-dependent tasks — opening a jar, carrying shopping, gripping a racket through a long rally — because the underlying tendon pathology affects load tolerance more than moment-to-moment discomfort. Scoring pain and function as two separate 0-50 subscales (rather than one blended number) lets you and a physiotherapist see which one is actually driving your total score, and target treatment accordingly. This is also why the scale asks about specific everyday tasks like turning a doorknob or lifting a coffee cup rather than only asking “how bad is your elbow” in the abstract — concrete tasks produce more consistent, comparable answers than a vague global rating.
The PRTEE is designed to detect real change over weeks of rehab, not day-to-day fluctuation. Retaking it every 2-3 weeks during a structured recovery program gives you a much clearer trend than checking daily, which mostly just tracks noise.
Take the PRTEE Quiz
Base Every Answer on the Past Week
Answer all 15 items based on the past week only — not your worst-ever day, not how you expect to feel next week. If you genuinely never perform one of the specific tasks below (for example, you never carry a grocery bag by the handle), leave that single item blank; the scoring formula accounts for it. If a task is simply too painful to attempt, answer 10 rather than leaving it blank — “too painful to try” is itself the answer of “unable to do.”
Part 1 — Pain (5 items)
Rate the average amount of pain in your arm over the past week.
Part 2A — Specific Activities (6 items)
Rate the amount of difficulty you experienced performing each task over the past week.
Part 2B — Usual Activities (4 items)
Rate the amount of difficulty in your usual activities — the activities you performed before your arm problem started.
Understanding Your Score
What the Numbers Actually Mean
Your Pain Score (0-50) and Function Score (0-50) combine into a Total Score (0-100), where 0 represents no pain and no disability, and 100 represents the worst possible pain and complete inability to perform any of the listed tasks. There is no single validated "cutoff" that separates a normal elbow from an injured one on this scale — unlike some other outcome measures, the PRTEE is designed primarily to track change within one person over time, rather than to classify people into "healthy" versus "injured" categories. That is exactly why retesting every few weeks, and watching the trend rather than any single score, is the most useful way to use it.
Using This Alongside Your Rehab Program
If you're working through our padel elbow rehab program, retake this quiz at the start of each new phase. A falling total score — particularly a falling Function score — is a genuinely encouraging sign that your loading program is working. A score that plateaus or rises despite consistent rehab work is worth flagging directly to a physiotherapist rather than pushing through on your own.
The PRTEE measures pain and functional difficulty only. It cannot tell you whether you have lateral epicondylitis, a partial tendon tear, nerve involvement, or something unrelated to the elbow entirely, and it is not a substitute for an in-person clinical assessment. Please see a physiotherapist or doctor for diagnosis, especially if pain is severe, worsening, or accompanied by numbness or weakness.
You know the feeling — you tell yourself the elbow is "about the same" for the third week running, mostly because checking honestly feels discouraging. Most amateur players avoid tracking it for exactly that reason. What actually works is writing the number down anyway, good or bad, because a real trend line — even a slow one — tells you far more than another vague "meh" ever will.
Who This Is For
Padel players with ongoing elbow pain who want an objective way to track whether their rehab is working
Anyone following our padel elbow rehab program, retesting at the start of each new phase
Physiotherapists and coaches wanting a quick, citable outcome measure to discuss with padel players
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the PRTEE scale?
The Patient-Rated Tennis Elbow Evaluation (PRTEE) is a validated 15-item questionnaire developed by Joy MacDermid at McMaster University, measuring pain (5 items) and functional disability (10 items) related to lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow or padel elbow. It produces a combined score from 0 to 100.
What is a "good" or "bad" PRTEE score?
There is no single official cutoff separating a normal from an injured elbow on this scale. It was designed mainly to track change within the same person over time rather than to classify severity in absolute terms. A falling score over successive weeks of rehab is the meaningful signal, not any one number in isolation.
How often should I retake this quiz?
Every 2 to 3 weeks during an active rehab program is a sensible interval — often enough to catch a genuine trend, not so often that you are just tracking day-to-day noise. Testing daily tends to be more discouraging than useful.
Can this quiz diagnose tennis elbow or padel elbow?
No. This tool measures the severity of pain and functional difficulty only. It cannot diagnose lateral epicondylitis, rule out other causes of elbow pain, or replace an in-person assessment by a physiotherapist or doctor.
Keep Reading
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The structured, progressive program — retest with this quiz each phase.
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