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
Social determinants of health – are we doing enough?
Physiotherapists don't generally think our profession is 'political.' We mostly work on people's bodies, in one-to-one sessions, and few of us use our social standing as respected, orthodox health professionals to campaign for community causes. There are no physiotherapy-specific models of population health, and subjects like primary health care and health promotion are only just beginning to appear in undergraduate curricula. So while physiotherapists are experts in the assessing and treating the body-as-machine, and we are increasingly interested in people lived experiences of health and illness, we are less aware of the social determinants of health. Social determinants are those … [Read more...] about Social determinants of health – are we doing enough?
Really Good Stuff: Lessons learned through innovation in medical education
Each year, the journal Medical Education produces a list of brief papers called 'Really Good Stuff: Lessons learned through innovation in medical education.' It usually contains some interesting ideas. Here is the latest edition. A peer-reviewed collection of short reports from around the world on innovative approaches to medical education (pages 1101–1102) Article first published online: 12 OCT 2014 | DOI: 10.1111/medu.12600 Introduction (page 1103) M Brownell Anderson Article first published online: 12 OCT 2014 | DOI: 10.1111/medu.12599 Multiple mini-interviews combined with group interviews in medical student selection (page 1104) Shih-Chieh Liao, Tzuen-Ren Hsiue, … [Read more...] about Really Good Stuff: Lessons learned through innovation in medical education