I had a lovely conversation with some colleagues from Tromsø University's School of Physiotherapy on Monday night after my keynote to the Norwegian Physiotherapists' Congress. Having talked about 'The End of Physiotherapy', they asked me a question I seem to be getting asked a lot now. "So" they said, "what's the answer ... what's the future for physiotherapy?" Now it's an absolutely foundational principle for me that it's not my place to tell people 'the answer' (as if there could ever be an answer). And that's partly because I subscribe to a Foucauldian approach to critical thinking that says you don't replace one bad hegemony (or dominant way of viewing the world) with another. But … [Read more...] about Leaving (physiotherapy) home
A recipe for bad qualitative research
I often think that I was very lucky to have been given a classical physiotherapy training – with its focus on anatomy and physiology, biomechanics and kinesiology, objective testing and quantitative research. But this was enriched no end by being introduced to qualitative research early in the 1990s when it was really taking off in healthcare. Since then I've probably reviewed more than a hundred qualitative research articles and read thousands more. And in all that time I still come back to one simple test of whether qualitative research is any good or not. Whenever I review qualitative research article I ask myself is the study is telling me anything I don't know already. … [Read more...] about A recipe for bad qualitative research
Beyond Motherhood and Apple Pie
This second blogpost from Dina Brooks extends her argument about the role of the CPN in reaching out to the wider physiotherapy community. In my last blog, Reflections of a quantitative researcher on the CPN Salon, I suggested that we needed to build bridges not walls and encouraged CPN to have more connections with the biomedical quantitative physiotherapy world. Although there was general buy-in to the idea, I was vague in my last blog and wanted to follow up by getting more specific and expanding on the why and how I see this connection happening. Specifically, I wanted to address the risks to the CPN, reasons why the CPN is best positioned to reach across the divide and make … [Read more...] about Beyond Motherhood and Apple Pie
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
Collecting Qualitative Data: Beyond the face-to-face interview
This short course caught my eye the other day for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think interviews are vastly overused in qualitative research and have written about why they are problematic before (see refs), and secondly, because the excellent Virginia Braun from Auckland University is speaking. Could be worth a visit for those of you in the area. Collecting Qualitative Data: Beyond the face-to-face interview Thursday 3 November, 10am-5pm, Exhibition and Conference Centre (ECC), Frenchay Campus, UWE Bristol Is there more to qualitative data collection than (face-to-face) interviews? This seminar answers with a resounding yes, and introduces delegates to a range of exciting, often … [Read more...] about Collecting Qualitative Data: Beyond the face-to-face interview
Exercising our demons
I’ve just returned from the biennial NZSP conference held over the last two days in Auckland, and I find myself, once again, disheartened by some of the ideas my colleagues are promoting. Years ago, when I was a junior practitioners and an even more novice qualitative researcher, I would go to physiotherapy conferences hoping to hear the brightest and the best, speaking about cutting edge practice. But rarely did I hear anything about people as people, social theories, politics, disability rights, gender issues, etc. There was never even the slightest mention of anything qualitative to break up the dry diet of quantitative facts and figures. (Those were the days when physiotherapy was … [Read more...] about Exercising our demons
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