Anne Marit Mengshoel, Professor at the University of Oslo and member of the Critical Physiotherapy Network, is offering a two-year postdoctoral scholarship in Musculoskeletal disorders: Recovery from fibromyalgia. The project is a collaboration between the university and the EU and allows for the successful candidate to stay for one year in Oslo and one year at their home University funded by the University of Oslo. For further information about the Scientia Fellow postdoctoral program, follow this link. Anne Marit has provided some more information about her research, department and institute: Our department is multidisciplinary, including staff with backgrounds in nursing, … [Read more...] about New postdoc scholarship: Recovery from fibromyalgia
Perception is everything
A recent article in the Boston Globe (Doctors debate safety of their white coats) talked about how doctors had realised that their traditional white coats were 'germ magnets,' and how they were now discarding them in favour of less formal attire. Setting aside the rather obvious question of why a dirty white lab coat would be any more rancid than a dirty shirt - a point also sidestepped in the article - the Globe went on to suggest that the good natured debate that had ensued 'touched on shifting perceptions of the physician’s role.' On the one hand, the white lab coat is a symbol of trust. There are studies that show powerful placebo effects of people wearing white lab coats (see … [Read more...] about Perception is everything
Person most likely…
Congratulations to CPN Executive Member Jenny Setchell for winning the prize for the 'Paper most likely to have an impact on the profession' at the recent APA conference, for her paper 'Physical therapists' ways of thinking and talking about overweight and obesity - Clinical implications.' Jenny is based at the University of Queensland in Australia and has research interests in discrimination in a health care context, particularly how health professional attitudes and perceptions towards patients/clients can affect their health care. She is currently researching: Anti-fat attitudes, or weight stigma, of physiotherapists and their clinical relevance The impacts of medical doctors' … [Read more...] about Person most likely…
CPN at the 2015 APA Conference
Over the last few days, we’ve achieved another landmark in the evolution of the CPN, when six members of the Network presented the first Critical Physiotherapy Forum at the Australian Physiotherapy Association Conference on the Gold Coast, Queensland (link). Led by CPN Exec member Jenny Setchell in collaboration with the APA, we outlined five different critical research programmes and topics of critical interest, before hosting a panel discussion on the possibilities for more critical physiotherapy thinking and practice in the future Ian Edwards - What is the source of our ethical obligation in physiotherapy practice: Codes of Conduct or the Levinasian face? Amy Hiller - ‘Insider’ … [Read more...] about CPN at the 2015 APA Conference
New: Methods
Consider this list: Participatory action research Ethnography Case study Narrative ethnography Discourse analysis Grounded theory Visual methods Feminist Critical humanism Photo-voice Queer theory Mixed method Performance ethnography Constructivist Critical arts-based inquiry Oral history Online ethnography Conversation analysis Memory work Interpretive phenomenology Autoethnography Q methodology Ethnomethodology Historiographic Institutional ethnography... This list is just a sample of some of the different approaches to data collection, text generation and analysis that are part of the growth of qualitative, and theoretically and … [Read more...] about New: Methods
New: Truths
One of the inescapable realities of modern life, or should that be post-modern life, is that we have all become skeptical of authority figures that want to tell us that they know the answers, and that we should follow them compliantly, passively and unquestioningly. There once was a time when people genuinely believed that the church, judges, the police, school teachers, parents, doctors and other authority figures genuinely knew best, but our trust in these authorities has been eroded by scandals, self interest and injurious practices. And while some of us yearn for a simpler time when the world was black and white, we can’t erase the image of child abuse by Catholic priests, medical … [Read more...] about New: Truths
New: Journals
Physiotherapy desperately needs more journals. Not the kind of journals that have 4,ooo word limits, or the kinds that still celebrate passive third-person prose, but the kind where the quality of ideas trump the elegance of the scatter plot. We need journals where physiotherapists can engage in the kinds of discussion you see in Nursing Inquiry, Body and Society or Health. These journals are fora where writers can exercise Karl Popper's assertion that the scholarly community should not prop up existing beliefs, but should commit all its not insignificant resources to tearing down current dogmas and ideologies, creating a space where new ideas can prosper. Physiotherapists have … [Read more...] about New: Journals