For a long time now, physiotherapy practice has been becoming increasingly pressured, with less time to spend with clients, tighter regulations about the number of appointments, and unrelenting pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our interventions. Where once patients would be in our hands for long enough to enjoy a modicum of rehabilitation or respite, now the emphasis is on the shortest possible contact necessary to cut the cost of care. I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with efficiency, independence and autonomy per se (well, I am, but that's for another day), and I'm well aware that the kinds of long-term care experienced by people under the … [Read more...] about Slow physiotherapy
“Seated physios giving advice on exercise to patients over the phone” – a follow-up
I posted a tweet about a small bit of news from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) that had caught my eye yesterday. It was about 'A telephone assessment service in Cambridgeshire [that] is helping more than half of its physiotherapy patients to self-manage their conditions' (link to the full press release here). It featured an image that I thought was interesting and just a little ironic. Here is the image. My comment on Twitter was that this was 'a thing of postmodern beauty', and both the picture and the full report raised the ire of some in the Twitter community. There were a number of things going on in this report that I think said some important things about the … [Read more...] about “Seated physios giving advice on exercise to patients over the phone” – a follow-up
The politics of touch
Perhaps one of the biggest points of difference in current debates around the future of physiotherapy involves the question of whether physiotherapy should be evidence-based. It is self-evidence - so some say - that physiotherapy practice should be based on the best available evidence, since to practice otherwise might put people at risk, or damage the reputation of physiotherapy as a science. One of the less-well-often discussed issues with this argument is how much people - and by this I mean the public, our professional colleagues and peers, and the organisations that fund us and legislate for us - actually care whether some therapeutic practices are evidence-based. An article … [Read more...] about The politics of touch