There's a great thesis to be written on the politics of physiotherapy. It would include something about how the profession fought hard to become an ally to governments looking to return men to the Western Front during World War I. It would look at the ways physiotherapists transferred this experience into rehabilitation and ensured people returned to work as soon as possible so that they would be productive members of society, rather than a 'drain' on the State or their communities. It might even look at how largely silent physiotherapy has been about social inequality and injustice, and how we have managed to convince ourselves that for more than 100 years that physiotherapy was … [Read more...] about Karl Marx would have loved physiotherapy
Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care
Each day over the next week I'll post up an abstract for a paper being presented by a member of the Critical Physiotherapy Network at the In Sickness and In Health conference in Mallorca in June 2015. (You can find more information on the conference here.) Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care By David Nicholls Calls for health professionals to be more than ‘technical rationalists’ have been prominent in professionalization literature for more than half a century. Professions with a strong history of skills-based competence have struggled more than most to respond to these calls. Those that have been heavily influenced by biomedical discourses - professions like … [Read more...] about Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care
Critical physiotherapy curios – updates, ideas and new postings
Research We have to start with this. WCPT has published a list of the 15 most influential trials in physical therapy. I loved the fact that they used a qualitative process to ascertain which blinded, controlled and randomised clinical trial they found most influential. No hint of irony there then! Fatemeh Rabiee, Anne Robbins and Maryam Khan's article in Health Education Journal Gym for Free: The short-term impact of an innovative public health policy on the health and wellbeing of residents in a deprived constituency in Birmingham, UK is well worth a look if you're interested in how community-based health interventions might work for people in marginalised communities. A paper … [Read more...] about Critical physiotherapy curios – updates, ideas and new postings