A recent article in The Conversation explored how training to be a surgeon subtly marginalised women and promoted the idea that surgery was a man's world (link). Surgical training was described as 'powerful, visible, gendered and discriminatory'. Over the last few months I've been writing and thinking a lot about the gendering of physiotherapy. Much of that has revolved around the ways that women masseuses in World War I first came into contact with young male bodies, and the brutal ways they went about rehabilitating them. (The image above is from a classic series of postcards that depicted the dominating and and fearful WWI masseuse - see Carden-Coyne, 2008). Anders Ottosson's … [Read more...] about Does physiotherapy’s hidden curriculum exclude men?
There are no new treatments in physiotherapy
A few days ago, I responded to a Tweet from Glyn Blakey (@saebouglyn) and Mary Banks (@MaryBanksy) after Mary had posted up a paper suggesting that the Saebo Mobile Arm Support (SaeboMAS) had reduced tonic muscle activity across all muscles, and that this had had a positive influence on corticomotor selectivity of biceps brachii during a counterbalanced movement tasks. This all sounds very fancy, but what it basically means is that if you support the arm, the patient who is having difficulty moving, can concentrate on one joint activity while the rest of the limb is supported. You'll get a better idea if you see a picture of the SaeboMAS at work: Seeing the paper made me wonder … [Read more...] about There are no new treatments in physiotherapy