Critical physiotherapy curios – updates, ideas and new postings

Research

We have to start with this.  WCPT has published a list of the 15 most influential trials in physical therapy.  I loved the fact that they used a qualitative process to ascertain which blinded, controlled and randomised clinical trial they found most influential.  No hint of irony there then!

Fatemeh Rabiee, Anne Robbins and Maryam Khan’s article in Health Education Journal Gym for Free: The short-term impact of an innovative public health policy on the health and wellbeing of residents in a deprived constituency in Birmingham, UK is well worth a look if you’re interested in how community-based health interventions might work for people in marginalised communities.
A paper by Daniela Dantas Lima, Vera Lucia Pereira Alves and Egberto Ribeiro Turato in Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine was sent to me by Jens Olesen.  The paper The phenomenological-existential comprehension of chronic pain: going beyond the standing healthcare models looks at how we have moved from a biomedical understanding of chronic pain to more of an individual lived experience.  The paper explores the part played by phenomenology.

I’m a big fan of the French Philosopher Jacques Rancière, so it was really nice to see this article A Breathing Space for Aesthetics and Politics: An Introduction to Jacques Rancière by Nikos Papastergiadis.  If you haven’t seen it, I promise Rancière’s book The Ignorant Schoolmaster (which you can find in pdf on-line) will change your view of teaching and learning.

Our recent posts on Connectivity have thrown up some interesting articles.  This paper on Critical Neuroscience and Socially Extended Minds by Jan Slaby and Shaun Gallagher looks at the idea of intersubjectivity in critical neuroscience.

The use of simulation is a really interesting development in physiotherapy education in recent years.  This paper by some very eminent names in health education provides a sociomaterial view of its practice.

Web

My top find of the month has to be the Continental Philosophy blog.  There’s more Foucault, Butler and Deleuze here than you can shake a stick at.  A fantastic resource for those of you with an interest in critical and postmodern ideas.

Steve Wheeler’s latest short blogpost on learning by teaching is well worth a read.

This well referenced post by Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes and Aimee Denoyelles titled Designing Critically: Feminist Pedagogy for Digital / Real Life on the fantastic Hybrid Pedagogy blog is well worth a read if you’re interested in a gendered take on the tensions between teaching large classes (lecture theatres, MOOCs, etc.) vs dialogical teaching.

I spent far too long this week browsing The Public Domain Review. This is a web miscellany with some really fabulous content.

If you haven’t come across the on-line free Journal of Evolution & Technology, you might want to have a look at its contents.  If you’re interested in ideas about how the body is evolving in the 21st century – particularly the effect of technology and cyborg-culture – then this site has some really interesting content.

Alf Collins’s recent thought paper on how person-centre care might work raises some interesting questions about how the structure of health are in the west might need to shift if we are to become truly person-centred.

For lovers of Friedrich Nietzsche, this one-hour YouTube video will be a lot of fun.  It’s a pretty good summary of this complex and highly influential philosopher.

…and anything on Hannah Arendt is worth a read.  This post on the ever reliable Brain Pickings gives some insights into this amazing philosopher’s mind.

Books

A new book from Routledge titled the Routledge Handbook of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Perspectives from Social Science and Law caught my eye.  Some of the chapters on the move of complementary therapies into orthodox health care and recognition for indigenous medicine looked really interesting.  There’s a lot of physical therapy practice in the book too it seems.

And another new book that looks like it might have some interesting links to physiotherapy is Creative Arts in Humane Medicine
by Cheryl L. McLean; ‘Creative Arts in Humane Medicine takes us on a fascinating journey to meet the educators, clinicians, support workers and artists who apply arts-based methods in innovative ways to enhance patient care, reflexivity in learners and a sense of community, and well-being in practitioners.’