Although originally American, I now identify more as an Australian. By the way, the portrait is of me by a patient, not by me. In my first couple of years as a Physical Therapist in the US, I didn’t feel I knew enough or could do enough to be paid for what I was doing. I even went so far as my asking for a reduction in my pay – it was the 1970’s after all. It came to a choice of finding a way to be more effective or do something else. One venture into the ‘something elses’ was an informal apprenticeship with an 80 y/o Appalachian man making split-oak baskets and traditional chairs with hickory bark seats. For better or worse, I was accepted into what was then usually referred to as a … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 – Neil Tuttle

I have been interested in the social and political aspects of anything my whole adult life – so when it came to researching physiotherapy and healthcare I guess it made sense that I followed these perspectives. This including co-founding the CPN with Dave Nicholls and Barb Gibson. After completing my PhD which used weight stigma as a forum to investigate the socio-political aspects of physiotherapy. I have been fortunate enough to join with two wonderful and hugely influential teams for the past three years. One is super-critical and is at the University Toronto headed by Prof Barb Gibson (long term CPN executive member) and the other is led by Prof Paul Hodges at The University of … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 26 – Jenny Setchell

As a physio in the US, I have spent 8 years providing care in the public education system and private schools serving children with developmental delays and their families, 10 years in traditional outpatient care primarily serving patients with neuromusculoskeletal complaints, and I am now about to begin my 7th year in the home health setting mostly serving patients with chronic cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological health complaints. When I started my journey as a fresh/green physio, I recognized that my relationships with the children I was working with was of utmost importance as I tried to motivate 2- and 3-year-olds to engage in (fun!) play that would be … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 25 – Keith Waldron

It is almost 40 years since I became an occupational therapist. I was a student in Liverpool and then a clinician, first in a large university teaching hospital in Oxford, then in a regional rehabilitation centre in Saskatchewan, Canada, and subsequently in a rural area of Saskatchewan. After some years in this role I decided to upgrade my education, so returned to the UK, and the University of Southampton, to undertake an MSc in Rehabilitation Studies. It was here that I met the work of critical disability theorists, such as Oliver and Barnes, whose work resonated so strongly with my own experiences of living and working with disabled people that I can recall sitting up in bed, reading … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 24 – Karen Whalley Hammell

I’ve never taken things particularly seriously, either academically or living with muscular dystrophy.  Having stumbled into physio—literally, I kept falling over, so they made me go—I started thinking sociologically while in the waiting room.  I found that I could do two things at once, picking apart my personal experience of disability while poking holes in the Serious Science of Physical Therapy.  Why all this goal setting, why all this paperwork?  I had been reading a lot of critical theory, you know, Foucault, Heidegger, and the like, without a place to make sense of it.  Though I had never really thought of myself as a disabled person, as I started going through the disability … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 23 – Thomas Abrams

Hi everyone. My name is Lester Jones and I am a pain physiotherapist and educator. I have spent a long time at university and in the clinic exploring human health and behaviour including 4 years of psychology and a Masters degree in pain. If I had been driven in a different way, I would have spent that time doing a PhD - thankfully I wasn't - but now I find myself back at university doing just that with the amazing research group at Judith Lumley Centre. In my research, I am interested in the multiple dimensions of pain and how we can work with the complexity in different contexts. I was the inaugural chair of the APA National Pain Group and currently, I am on the committee for the … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 22 – Lester Jones

I have a background in dancing which was my original reason to study physiotherapy. I graduated in 2008 after which I found a new inspiration in geriatric physiotherapy. I had a very inspiring philosophy teacher at secondary school (or lukio in Finnish) and ever since I’ve had a fascination with philosophical thinking (fun fact: every Finnish lukio student has to take at least one philosophy course). The fascination has proved incurable, at least ever since I met my philosophical “enabler” and revolutionary soul mate who introduced me to dialectics from Hegel to Adorno. In 2011 we packed our belongings (mostly books) in a cheap van a moved from Finland to the UK, where I have finally been … [Read more...] about 30DoS 2018 Day 21 – Anna Rajala