One of the biggest growth areas for physiotherapists in the coming years years will be the management of chronic illness. The numbers of people now living with conditions that were once relatively rare is quite staggering, and they are becoming more complex. A report released last week by the Australian Health Policy Collaboration (link) has once again highlighted the need for us to take a society-wide approach to managing the threats posed by conditions like heart disease, diabetes, cancer and respiratory illnesses, through a concerted effort to tackle the 'upstream' causes: alcohol consumption, sedentary behaviour, high salt intake, smoking, etc. Obesity, diabetes, hypertension and … [Read more...] about Do you need a four-year degree to tell someone to stop smoking and do more exercise?
More on the measurement of pain
Neil Maltby's excellent blogpost yesterday (Algorithm is going to get you) was a refreshing reminder of some of the odd things we do in the name of science-based physiotherapy. Neil's post was about how we look for pseudo-scientific measurement of things that otherwise can't (and shouldn't) be measured. I've blogged about this before (see here, for example), and complained bitterly about our lack of sophistication when it comes to subjective phenomena like breathlessness, pain, loss (of functional ability), etc., that are the bread-and-butter of everyday life for working physiotherapists. No-one ever wakes up in the morning with a bad headache and says "Wow, I've got a really bad … [Read more...] about More on the measurement of pain
Uncertainty, luxury and creativity – a brief compendium
Last week I posted a compendium of some of the things I had found over the Christmas holiday that I thought might be interesting to people interested in all things critical. Here is another post pulling together some interesting loose strings and ephemera from the last 3 or 4 weeks. Uncertainty is a major theme for me in the pursuit of a more critically-informed physiotherapy. It seems to me that the ability to embrace uncertainty will be a vitally important capability for future practice - a point made in this post from the ever reliable and interesting Steve Wheeler. David Warlick once said 'for the first time we are preparing young people for a future we cannot clearly describe.' … [Read more...] about Uncertainty, luxury and creativity – a brief compendium