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
Evidence-based medicine or micro-fascism?
We can already hear the objections. The term fascism represents an emotionally charged concept in both the political and religious arenas; it is the ugliest expression of life in the 20th century (180). Not my words, but those of Dave Holmes and Stuart Murray in their fabulous paper Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: Truth, power and fascism. The author's argument is that we desperately need to unmask the 'the hidden politics of evidence-based discourse' (181). A recent Australian report on the efficacy of homeopathy (link) has shown that "There was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range of health … [Read more...] about Evidence-based medicine or micro-fascism?
‘Forget gurus, the cult of the evidence-based blogger has taken over’ by Alan Taylor
This is a reblogging of a post from last week by Alan Taylor...well worth a read. WARNING! This blog may contain traces of humour ... If you suffer a sense of humour deficit ... DO NOT READ ON! Some time ago now, I had the pleasure of reading an excellent article by Will Self called ‘The awful cult of the talentless hipster has taken over’ … Whilst I didn’t necessarily agree with his diatribe entirely, I lapped up the trademark dour humour, empathised with his view and thoroughly enjoyed the read. Then in a bizarre moment of thought association, my mind turned to my own area of interest, Health Sciences and evidence based practice (Physiotherapy in particular) … though this … [Read more...] about ‘Forget gurus, the cult of the evidence-based blogger has taken over’ by Alan Taylor
Being critical
In yesterday's post I mentioned the Hybrid Pedagogy site and the work they had done to define what it means to be critical in education. As a critical physiotherapy network, it's probably important that we do the same thing and articulate how we think we are critical, because there are so many different meanings for the word, it could easily be misleading. Critical can mean: Intensive care and the physiotherapy that is given to people in life-threatening situations Critically and systematically analysing the quality and content of research articles These are almost certainly the approaches to criticality most familiar to physiotherapists today. The first is a very specialised field of … [Read more...] about Being critical