We're coming to the end of a long academic year in New Zealand, so that means lots of examination and assessment of nervous students. This time last year I took over a postgraduate paper called Health Professional Practice with a view to 'reshaping' it. For years it had been delivered in a standard fashion: block study, lots of lectures and tutorials - mostly directed at students rather than engaging them, boring assessments. I decided to shake things up a bit. The paper needed to be much more about what made the students 'tick' as health professionals; their experiences, ideas and issues. But it also needed to get them to critically examine their professions in ways they hadn't … [Read more...] about Innovation
How to be an expert in physiotherapy today
There was an interesting collaborative blogpost by Jarod Hall a few days ago. Titled 'Knowledge Bombs for a Successful Clinical Career' it summarised a great collective effort by a number of experienced clinicians looking to summarise some of the key tenets of current clinical practice (link). Some of the summary points were that good clinicians build therapeutic alliances and actively ('truly') listen to their clients; that clinicians are experts at the basics and should not take the blame for patients not getting better; and that education and exercise are key. There are many things to like about this blogpost, not least the collaboration between colleagues and the earnest attempt … [Read more...] about How to be an expert in physiotherapy today
Educating the deliberate professional – new book from CPN members
This new book, which is available here, has just been produced by long-time CPN member Professor Franziska Trede in collaboration with Dr Celina McEwen from The Education for Practice Institute at Charles Sturt University (CSU). The book examines how the role and identity of universities are increasingly affected by current worldwide social trends towards globalisation, digitalisation, and an emphasis on individualism. Professor Trede, Co-Director of the Institute, said these changes have led to universities being positioned in a force field of competing interests, and the book discusses growing global trends and their associated tighter connections between university education and the … [Read more...] about Educating the deliberate professional – new book from CPN members
New: Histories
I’m speaking purely for myself here, but I feel that physiotherapy doesn’t really need any more quantitative research on hamstring stretching. I think we’ve seen enough evidence that pain is aversive, and that putting scores on complex conditions critically misrepresents the condition, the person’s lived experience, and the benefits of physiotherapy. Where I feel we could definitely do with more research - particularly these days, where we are increasingly looking for ideas about how physiotherapy might need to change in the future - is research about our past. Not just accounts of past events, although even some of this would be nice, but historical works that connect to messages … [Read more...] about New: Histories
New: Open badges
Some people reading this blog may be old enough to remember a time when physiotherapists, occupational therapists and other professions allied to medicine were trained in colleges and schools attached to large teaching hospitals. Others will have only known the university system. For most of us though, the university holds a special significance. It is where knowledge is acquired and one discovers the rudiments of one's future practice. (Of course, we all know the real learning takes place in the clinical environment, but this only serves to enhance the ivory tower image of the university and the people working within it). You used to go to university to acquire an education and a … [Read more...] about New: Open badges
Decolonizing health professional education
A new paper from Mershen Pillay (CPN member) and Harsha Kathard titled Decolonizing health professional education has just been published by the African Journal of Rhetoric. The paper explores how higher education practice is failing the majority population in South Africa, and offers some critical insights into the nature of 'othering' that is prevalent in many health education programmes around the world. Abstract We argue that there is an urgent need to transform how we educate health professionals in South Africa. We focus on Audiology and Speech-Language Therapy, which are health professions that manage people with communication disorders and swallowing difficulties. Our … [Read more...] about Decolonizing health professional education
Physiotherapy education for the 21st century
Guest post by Michael Rowe The beginning of the 21st century has seen more technological advances than any other time in our history, at an accelerating rate of change. At the time of writing, we are seeing the introduction of robotics, gene therapy and nanotechnology into larger and larger aspects of health care which, when combined with advances in computing power that will soon exceed the processing power of the human brain, we seem poised on the brink of a shift in our understanding of what it means to be human. In addition to the obvious influence of information and communication technology on social structures, we are also experiencing a shift from vertical communication structures … [Read more...] about Physiotherapy education for the 21st century