Ben Cormack wrote a post on Facebook yesterday that touched on an important point about innovation and creativity in physiotherapy. The post read: Therapeutic exercise can often literally suck out all the motivation to do it. It can be so meaningless & monotonous. We exercise because it makes us feel good or we want to look good. We play sport because we enjoy the social engagement or the game. We engage in meaningful activities that use our bodies because we can switch off from the world or they provide fulfilment. We need to tap into the things that inspire people to move rather than just tell them to exercise (link). Notice how in each case Ben argues that we do … [Read more...] about Transforming physiotherapy
Punk physiotherapy
There have been times in the history of music, where the only legitimate musicians and composers were highly trained, highly skilled elites. Mozart, Beethoven and Bach were prolific geniuses who bestrode popular music and set the standard for future generations to follow. But as in all art forms, radical change came from movements at the margins with innovations born from necessity or opportunity. The new sound was often unpopular, derided as crude, and pushed to the margins from whence it came. In the 1970s, popular music was dominated by musicians who were often highly skilled in songwriting or consummate technicians. 12 minute guitar solos and whole albums of conceptually rich, but … [Read more...] about Punk physiotherapy
New physiotherapy – 7 ways to change the world
I read something about critical theory this morning that made me think about a couple of recent posts on the future of physiotherapy. In the piece, the author was taking critical theorists to task for attempting to ‘demystify’ the social world without proposing solutions. People, she argued, want attractive alternatives and a sense that utopia, or at least the hope of a better life, might be possible. This is a powerful argument that I don’t entirely agree with, but it did make me think about Roger Kerry’s recent blogpost ‘Physio will eat itself’, which followed my own question of whether we would disestablish physiotherapy as a profession if it were in the best interests of patients or … [Read more...] about New physiotherapy – 7 ways to change the world
Should we give up physiotherapy?
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?
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
Making enemies of friends
When Voltaire, the French philosopher and writer, was on his death-bed in 1778, he was asked by his priest if he renounced Satan, he replied "Now, my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." I heard the quote again the other day when I was talking to a friend about the way that the greatest enemies of progress are often one's own colleagues and friends. The subject came up because of two instances in nursing that had shown how unstable some professional ideologies can be when exposed to critical scrutiny. The first instance was the debate surrounding the publication of David Thompson and Philip Darbyshire's paper Is academic nursing being sabotaged by its own killer … [Read more...] about Making enemies of friends
Sonambulismo hacia Sudáfrica
En la misma semana que WCPT envió una llamada pidiendo a todos a contribuir a su estrategia de futuro (enlace), un documento que demuestra que 'Incluso caminar es más peligroso si eres negro' (enlace) me recordó que el próximo congreso WCPT se celebrará en Sudáfrica en 2017, y esto debe representar una oportunidad de oro para demostrar que la fisioterapia tiene algo importante que decir acerca de lo que es una realidad cotidiana para muchas personas en todo el mundo. El estudio de la revista Transportation Research titulado "sesgo racial en el comportamiento de conductores cediendo el paso en los cruces peatonales” mostró que había claros prejuicios raciales en el comportamiento del … [Read more...] about Sonambulismo hacia Sudáfrica