Today is a momentous day!
After some weeks of planning, I am proud to announce the formal arrival of the Critical Physiotherapy Network.
For a long time now, I’ve been thinking about bringing together a group of critical-thinking physiotherapists from around the world who were interested in philosophy, history, cultural studies, sociology, qualitative research and education.
A few weeks ago I decided to step down from my role as Head of Physiotherapy at AUT University, and that induced me to think about some of the projects that were lying in wait ready for when I had more time.
So I began by contacting half-a-dozen colleagues I knew around the world who were critical thinkers, and asked them if they would be interested in forming a group, and if they could pass the invite on to others that they knew. I thought we might be a small group of no more than a dozen like-minded colleagues. How naive I was!
Within a few days, the snowball had gathered momentum and begun to roll off in all kinds of different directions. I started getting responses from Scandinavia, the UK, Canada, and Australia, and a host of other corners of the world, and everyone spoke as if this was an idea whose time had come.
To date, we have 65 confirmed ‘members’ from 13 different countries with a further 25 being organised.
We’ve decided that we want the group to be accessible, supporting, fun and friendly, and we want to be a forum where people can feel comfortable expressing a diversity of ideas.
We’re going to start by forming an organising committee and finding out a bit more about each other, because there are clearly more critical thinkers out there in physiotherapy than any one of us knew before.
At some point soon we’ll organise a central repository for our information and resources, and send out invites to every jurisdiction to encourage practitioners, lecturers, researchers and students who think differently about physiotherapy to participate. We’ll be organising meetings, webinars, unconferences and the like, and looking for every opportunity to encourage physiotherapists to think differently about their profession.
So if this network sounds like it might appeal to you, contact me directly at david.nicholls@aut.ac.nz, or send a comment to this post and I’ll be in touch.
Great idea for a network. I will follow with interest and look forward to upcoming posts.
Thanks
Mark
Look forward to learning and participating in this network
Cillin
@QualityPhysio on Twitter, because #Quality in #Physiotherapy will certainly be part of the discussion.
Fantastic news! I like the new promo material. I am currently at a Qualitative Research Course with a lot of Critical Psychologists in Bristol. Have found another Physio here! Will share details.
J
This sounds fantastic! Open minded critical thinkers are as rare as people with good sense and I look forward to all the posts. New and great opportunities for learning are what this age of information is all about.
Love the idea here Dave, I’ll be definitely watching to see how this evolves. Hope to participate some day too.
Sounds like a great adventure and a needed one within the profession. I look forward to seeing it develop.
Great initiative! I am really looking forward to being involved – I love the idea of having a collective – to nudge, challenge, nurture and generally push the intellectual boundaries of clinical practice and research.
Sounds a really interesting venture! I am predominantly using quantitative design at present, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t value and embrace qualitative methodologies and philosophical debate!
Great Idea. Nice to know there are fellow critical minds out there 😉 Look forward to reading and participate.
Very good idea building this group. I’m a colleague specialized in psychiatric and psychosomatic physiotherapy, which has long been a tradition in Scandinavian countries. Working in this field, a phenomenological approach to the person is needed. Which means looking at the body not just as a bio mechanical and chemical phenomena, but as a relational and emotional phenomena too, where life’s experiences, history and meaning take place. It’s time for us physiotherapist to explore these aspects, develop and spread our specific professional skills in this direction too. Working with the person’s body, we have a unique opportunity also to facilitate the access to his/her inner world, when we know how to do that. I hope this group will be a source of inspiration and development in this direction.
Giuseppe Daverio,
PT, Spec. Psych. & Psychosomatic Physiot.
Hi Giuseppe
Thanks so much for your comment. Physiotherapy in Scandinavia certainly has a strong history in the phenomenological aspects of embodiment. Can I ask a couple of questions? Is the same true of some of the more sociological dimensions of health and illness? Are these taught in physio schools in Scandinavia? And if so, how do Scandinavian physiotherapy schools address some of the inherent tensions that arise between biological, humanistic and social ways of viewing health? Many phenomenological and sociological perspectives challenge biomedicine’s understanding of ideas like ‘the body’, the meaning of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘illness’ and critique the power that has centred around medicine. How do school curricula address these tensions while still teaching the origins and insertions of adductor longus?
Dave
Hi Dave,
Great idea, sounds like boundary smudging, keep me posted,
Joke
This sounds really interesting!
Great idea…loved it…I am from India and was in US practicing physiotherapy since 3 years…I love discussing different issues in our field but somehow end up having conversation with non-interested people…I am glad I found this group…