Notwithstanding everything else that's gone on this year, we've had another busy and productive 12 months in the CPN. We now have just over 700 members in 49 countries. The website has attracted 60,000 more views this year and we've managed to produce 130 blogposts (nearly 900 since the site was established six years ago). We've published our second edited collection of critical physiotherapy writings - Mobilizing knowledge: Critical Reflections on Foundations and Practices - which was two years in the making and involved 39 authors from seven different countries and 15 different professional disciplines. We ran a second Critical Physiotherapy Course over six months between April … [Read more...] about The CPN year in review
Physiotherapy clinicians perceptions of AI in clinical practice
Clinicians in the near future will find themselves working with information networks on a scale well beyond the capacity of human beings to grasp, thereby necessitating the use of intelligent machines to analyse and interpret the complex interactions of data, patients and clinical decision-making. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that aims to embed intelligent behaviour into software in order to achieve narrowly constrained objectives in an increasingly wide domain of practice. In healthcare the field of AI research includes expert systems that provide guidance for clinical decision-making, computer vision algorithms that outperform human beings in the analysis of … [Read more...] about Physiotherapy clinicians perceptions of AI in clinical practice
Launching the NEW Environmental Physiotherapy Association
Physiotherapy has needed an international association dedicated to the environment for some time, and not only because we now have social media that allows us to connect across the globe, but because life on our planet is imperilled. The climate crisis now facing us is beyond doubt, and everyone - especially those with the kinds of social capital held by physiotherapists - has a responsibility to act. Physiotherapy has always been a ‘low carbon’ profession, and the environment has always been a part of our work, but it has never been celebrated overtly before, or thought of as a place where our work can make a significant impact. We hope that is about to change. Last month Filip … [Read more...] about Launching the NEW Environmental Physiotherapy Association
The first ever Free Critical Physiotherapy Online Course is coming
We've been planning to run a free online course on thinking critically about physiotherapy for some years, but now we are happy to announce that it has finally come to fruition. A team of CPN members have been thinking about the kind of course that we would want for months now, and we have taken our time to try to develop a program that we think you will find interesting and exciting. The course is grounded in practical, everyday physiotherapy challenges, but uses the experience of physiotherapists who have a deep knowledge of theory and philosophy to expand on the ways we currently think about these situations and issues. Is autonomy really a good thing for physiotherapists? … [Read more...] about The first ever Free Critical Physiotherapy Online Course is coming
CPN at WCPT – update
As I write this, we've just completed the second of three main CPN events that were planned for the WCPT congress here in Cape Town. On Sunday morning, eight of the nine CPN members met up for a strategic planning meeting, where we talked about how the CPN might develop in the coming years. More on this after the CPN Salon on Wednesday. The second event was the Focused Symposium at the congress itself. To recap, the WCPT only awards a limited number of Focused Symposia at each congress, and so we were very fortunate that our application to hold a symposium on critical thinking was accepted. I chaired the session and Mershen Pillay, Viviana Silva, Jenny Setchell and Barbara … [Read more...] about CPN at WCPT – update
A critical thinking sandpit exercise
It's hard sometimes to 'see' your own profession critically. Where do you start? What do you look for? How do you know that you've 'found' it? But if you're going to critically analyse your practice, having the ability to see what's normally in plain sight is a good skill to learn. There's an activity I do with PG students that I use to help them identify some of the things that underpin physiotherapy practice, so I thought I'd share it with you here and see if it resonates with you. (If you click to open this blogpost and scroll to the bottom, there's a comments box you can use if you have any particular thoughts you'd like to share). Step 1 - go into an image search engine, … [Read more...] about A critical thinking sandpit exercise