One of the biggest dilemmas facing the physiotherapy profession today is how to keep it alive. Given the unrelenting pressures to reform, cut costs, and redesign practice, it's hard to know whether to push the profession's stability, history and established culture, or to promote a radical new professional image. And faced with healthcare innovations that seem to be dissolving old certainties, it's hard to know whether we like it or not. Imagine, for instance, that robots were shown to be more reliable manipulators than physios, or that a low-cost assistant could do the work of post-op respiratory physiotherapy just as well as an expensively trained clinician. Would we promote … [Read more...] about Should we give up physiotherapy?
Slow physiotherapy
For a long time now, physiotherapy practice has been becoming increasingly pressured, with less time to spend with clients, tighter regulations about the number of appointments, and unrelenting pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our interventions. Where once patients would be in our hands for long enough to enjoy a modicum of rehabilitation or respite, now the emphasis is on the shortest possible contact necessary to cut the cost of care. I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with efficiency, independence and autonomy per se (well, I am, but that's for another day), and I'm well aware that the kinds of long-term care experienced by people under the … [Read more...] about Slow physiotherapy
Is there anyone better placed than a physio?
Thank you to everyone who responded to our last post on 10 reasons to love physiotherapy (link). These are strange and unsettling times, and it helps sometimes to be reminded of the good things that we do. This post follows on from last week's, asking the question whether there anyone better placed to take advantage of the changing face of healthcare than physiotherapists. Physiotherapists can sometimes forget how perfectly their skills and abilities line up with what people will want in the future, and we have perhaps been our own worst enemies in ignoring or minimising the power of some of these things in the past. So ask yourself this*: Are doctors better placed than physios … [Read more...] about Is there anyone better placed than a physio?
The NHS in crisis
Firstly, a very happy New Year to you one and all. Here's hoping you had a restful and peaceful break and you are looking forward to happy and rewarding 2017. The New Year has unfortunately arrived with the latest saga in the slow exsanguination of the UK's National Health Service. Over the last few days, the Red Cross - an entirely apolitical organisation it should be remembered - has announced that the public healthcare system in the UK is experiencing a "humanitarian crisis" (link), a comment fully endorsed by the British Medical Association but fiercely rejected by Prime Minister Theresa May (link). Whilst it would be wrong to put all the blame for the current crisis on the … [Read more...] about The NHS in crisis
Physiotherapy and the poverty of aged care
An Australian senator claimed a few days ago that one-third of all pensioners in Australia were living in poverty. If this is correct, it is a shocking statistic for a developed country like Australia, and a wake up call for professions like physiotherapy, which needs to have a voice in the discussion about the future of aged care. The Australian online journal The Conversation checked the claims made by Senator Jacqui Lambie, and agreed with her assertion, citing a 'widely reported OECD Study - Pensions at a Glance 2015' which showed that, 'According to the latest available figures, poverty rates of people aged over 65 were very high in Korea (50%), Australia (34%), and Mexico … [Read more...] about Physiotherapy and the poverty of aged care
Pensioners’ spending on physiotherapy
A recent study has shown that most Australian retirees spend a similar amount from their household income, regardless of their income and wealth (link). (Above graphic from p.17 of report). The research showed that '80 per cent of retired households reported expenditure levels considered to be the most basic standard living for retirees ($23,797 for singles, $43,226 for couples)' and that 'that contrary to conventional wisdom, expenditure did not appear to decline throughout the period of retirement – i.e. it is relatively constant'. What this research points to is that high-income earning households spend about the same as low-income households, thus saving a considerable amount more … [Read more...] about Pensioners’ spending on physiotherapy
Does physiotherapy’s hidden curriculum exclude men?
A recent article in The Conversation explored how training to be a surgeon subtly marginalised women and promoted the idea that surgery was a man's world (link). Surgical training was described as 'powerful, visible, gendered and discriminatory'. Over the last few months I've been writing and thinking a lot about the gendering of physiotherapy. Much of that has revolved around the ways that women masseuses in World War I first came into contact with young male bodies, and the brutal ways they went about rehabilitating them. (The image above is from a classic series of postcards that depicted the dominating and and fearful WWI masseuse - see Carden-Coyne, 2008). Anders Ottosson's … [Read more...] about Does physiotherapy’s hidden curriculum exclude men?