Births, deaths and marriages

There was a time, not so long ago, when physiotherapy journals included all sorts of ephemera; parliamentary reports, branch proceedings, and notices about the latest pay rise.  But by far the best bit of the journal came in the Personal section and notices about births, deaths and marriages.

Here’s an example from the Physiotherapy Journal of June 1962:

DAWSON.–On March 26, at Copton Ash Farm, Sheepy Magna, Atherstone, to Jean(nee Tudor, traing The Middlesex Hospital) and Peter Dawson, a daughter (Anna Rosemary), a sister for James and Richard.

Anna Rosemary of Sheepy Magna.  I kid ye not.

Well lest we be accused of taking our task too seriously, I’d like to end another busy week with some of our own social notices.

Two of the CPN’s more musically gifted members (Alan Taylor and Roger Kerry) have this week released a video premiere of their latest music/art collaboration with Eugenie Lee.  The piece is called ‘Black Rain’ and comes hot on the heels of their CD ‘Sons & Lovers’ which got a great write up from Lee Zimmerman on No Depression, among other places.

They’ve kindly sent us a trailer for the video and an mp3 to download.

The live World Premier of the song will take place on the Wednesday of IFOMPT 2016 in Glasgow at Nice n’ Sleazy.

You can find out more about the group here, here and here.

Two more very talented CPN members received gongs from the Queen this week.

Bhanu Ramaswamy and Ann Moore were awarded OBEs and CBEs respectively, which now entitles them both to sit in the House of Lords, wear ermine, own a moat, and employ servants as indentured labour on less than the minimum wage.

Huge congratulations to the two of them.  With Bhanu and Ann in positions of awesome power, world domination is within our grasp.

And finally, I’m delighted to be able to report that a crack team of CPN researchers will be presenting a focused symposium at the WCPT Congress in Cape Town in July next year.

Our session is titled: Critical Physiotherapy: New approaches for practice, education, research and policy and will be presented by yours truly, Barbara Gibson, Mershen Pillay, Jenny Setchell, and Viviana Silva Guerrero.

If you like a good read, here are the objectives for the session and a description to entice you to come:

Learning objectives:

By the end of the session the participants will:

1. Understand the basic tenets of critical approaches to physiotherapy and how these differ and/or add to mainstream approaches
2. Gain knowledge in how critical perspectives have been applied to practice, education, research and policy
3. Gain insight into applying a critical perspective to their areas of professional interest

Description:

Critical Physiotherapy strives to challenge and improve contemporary physiotherapy theory and practice through the exploration of views that deviate from conventional thought and practice (Gibson & Teachman 2012, Nicholls et al. 2016). It does so by examining its position on abnormality, deviance, and difference to recognize and address power asymmetries inherent in physiotherapy practice, particularly where they marginalize some groups at the expense of others (Pillay & Kathard 2015, Setchell et al. 2016).

While there are variants of critical approaches, they share a common belief that medicine and physiotherapy are overly concerned with biological, neurological, and physiological processes, to the exclusion of the moral, social, political, and cultural mediators of health and wellbeing (Nicholls & Gibson 2010, Setchell et al 2014). In this interactive symposium, we will begin with an introduction to basic tenets critical approaches as a method of inquiry and how they can be used to interrogate any area of practice to inform and reimagine an “otherwise” physiotherapy.  Each speaker will then explore an applied example of a critical approach and the implications for physiotherapy.

Gibson will discuss research with parents and children that examined key ideas about disability and normality in children’s rehabilitation and the consequences for young people labelled as disabled. Pillay will explore how teaching critical approaches can assist future and current  rehabilitation professionals’ to recognize how their practices reflect colonial origins; and how – globally – professional transformation must attend to decolonization. Setchell will draw on her research (Setchell et al. 2016) exploring (often unintentional and unrecognized) discrimination and stigma in physiotherapy.  She will demonstrate how critical understandings help to highlight nuances of physiotherapy that make stigmatization and marginalisation possible in the profession. Silva Guerrero will focus on the growing influence of neoliberalism (Homedes & Ugalde 2005) on healthcare and physiotherapy. Drawing on her experience of recent changes in Colombia, she will explore how social and political forces affect professional practices and policy.

An interactive session with the audience will follow. This will include facilitated opportunities for the audience members to discuss and reflect on their own experiences in physiotherapy from a critical perspective. There will also be opportunities to ask relevant questions of the speakers. The session will conclude with summary remarks from the Chair.