This post from our CPN Exec member Barbara Gibson just appeared on The AMS Phoenix Project site (link) and is cross-posted here. I recently attended my first AMS Phoenix Project Conference as a new grant recipient. It was a treat to be amongst a talented group of people who are collectively dedicated to infusing compassionate care into healthcare, and who are doing so from diverse perspectives. As someone who identifies as a critical researcher I was especially intrigued by some of the comments provided by speaker Arno Kumagai related to the problem of evaluating compassion. Dr Kumagai mentioned a somewhat disturbing trend in healthcare towards measuring compassionate care utilizing … [Read more...] about Wither ‘Quality of Life’?
The cult of the hero
Having talked with people about my last blog entry (Exercising our demons, 16th May 2010), one of the most interesting conversations centred around physiotherapy’s fascination with its heros; the ‘big names’ in the profession that are made famous by their inventions and innovations. The last blog entry touched on this only briefly, and only in the sense that I expressed my dislike for the naked evangelizing of some of the speakers at our conference. But there is a bigger point here that deserves consideration, because - as a couple of my colleagues pointed out - physiotherapy really does suffer, at times, from the cult of the hero. … [Read more...] about The cult of the hero
Exercising our demons
I’ve just returned from the biennial NZSP conference held over the last two days in Auckland, and I find myself, once again, disheartened by some of the ideas my colleagues are promoting. Years ago, when I was a junior practitioners and an even more novice qualitative researcher, I would go to physiotherapy conferences hoping to hear the brightest and the best, speaking about cutting edge practice. But rarely did I hear anything about people as people, social theories, politics, disability rights, gender issues, etc. There was never even the slightest mention of anything qualitative to break up the dry diet of quantitative facts and figures. (Those were the days when physiotherapy was … [Read more...] about Exercising our demons