Patient centredness is becoming a widely used, but poorly understood, concept in medical practice. It may be most commonly understood for what it is not—technology centred, doctor centred, hospital centred, disease centred (Miller, 2001: 322). There are a lot of practitioners and professional bodies that claim that their practice is patient centred. And why not. If people expect this to be stated as a defining feature of health professional practice today, why wouldn't you say it? After all, we work with patients don't we? We treat people every day. How could we not be patient centred? But isn't it interesting that this needs stating at all? Because how could health care not be patient … [Read more...] about Why physiotherapy is not patient centred
Is qualitative research in decline just as physiotherapy ‘gets’ it?
Over the last few months I've been reading more and more about the demise of qualitative research. This isn't coming from clinical scientists and quantitative researchers, but from people who have been invested in the field since its inception in the late 1980s. The argument they make is that qualitative research has now become too formulaic, systematized and too heavily methodological. It's lost its critical power and forgotten what qualitative inquiry was meant to be able to do. One of the people who explains this best is probably Elizabeth St Pierre Adams, and in this recent video from last year's Australasian Association for Research in Education (AARE) conference, she explains … [Read more...] about Is qualitative research in decline just as physiotherapy ‘gets’ it?
Physiotherapy, politics and evidence
Some of the discussion following the release of the CSP's recent video A new vision for physiotherapy prompted some interesting thoughts about the constant tension we face if we are to anticipate the future for our profession (link). A couple of issues surfaced from the blogpost and the comments that followed that prompted me to think about the link between physiotherapy, politics and evidence-based practice: Firstly, in defence of the CSP, it cannot be easy being a professional body these days. Social media has opened up great opportunities for communication and sharing of ideas, but it has also made a critic of everyone. This is perhaps one of the most important and challenging … [Read more...] about Physiotherapy, politics and evidence