Late last week, the Physiotherapy Board of New Zealand (PBNZ), released a statement titled Serious concerns about physiotherapists conduct (currently available on their website here, the full text is also reprinted at the bottom of this post). Tthe statement was prompted after the suspension of a New Zealand physiotherapist for being found guilty of professional misconduct reached the news. The male clinician was found guilty of having sex with a client (details here). He was subsequently fined $5,000NZD, ordered by the Board not to treat female patients, had his practice supervised every fortnight and complete a course about proper professional boundaries, but he was not struck … [Read more...] about No sex please, we’re physiotherapists*
Why you need to reject ethical guidelines if you want to practice ethically
Being critical to me is not about learning how to systematically review an article or deciding whether someone has used the right statistic test in their study. Rather, it's about asking fundamental questions about what I believe in, why I believe in those things, and what those things make possible and what they deny. I've tried to illustrate these principles this week with some posts that are superficially about sex and sensuality, but are really about how physiotherapists treat people. Sometimes this means subverting fundamental beliefs and upturning things that seem so obvious and taken for granted (quotidian, to use the fancy word), so that you can be sure that your moral compass … [Read more...] about Why you need to reject ethical guidelines if you want to practice ethically
Wrong-doing in physiotherapy is not where you think it is
It's been interesting this week to hear from physiotherapists who share my concern for the kinds of objective, detached, depersonalised ways that physiotherapists often project their professional practice identities. I think, as a profession, we're starting to understand some of the important reasons why we do this (we want to be considered professional, scientific, evidence-based, etc.), but it would be nice if we could also see more of the barriers to progress that these discourses are creating, and discuss whether there might be some value in thinking otherwise. I've developed, led and taught a 1st year UG paper called Therapeutic Touch for over a decade at AUT, and in the paper we … [Read more...] about Wrong-doing in physiotherapy is not where you think it is