Hi

I am not a private practitioner so private practitioners may disagree. My impression is however that in our small country our association NZSP has a pretty united front and represents the interests of private practitioners very well. All of the recent presidents and the current one have been private practitioners. the society has been very active in lobbying over better and continued funding by out national accident insurer and providing continued public relations info on the benefits of private physiotherapy - just two examples of continued focus on private practitioners.

As issues become more commercial in nature these need to be picked up the private practitioners group that works in cooperation with the larger body. That is only fair; public sector physios contribute to the funding of the Society at the same rates as private practitioners.

In New Zealand the Society is a broad church with a very diverse areas of practice and the public/private divide is just one example. For example we have a special interest group for the older adult - it's members include both private practitioners specialising in this area and physios working in the public sector. And this would be typical across the interest groups. These interest groups are more united by their patient focus than divided by their source of income.

Obviously private practitioners are in more direct competition with complementary health providers than public sector practitioners. However even here it isn't so black and white. For example we have government funded primary health organisations who will often employ personal trainers or massage therapist in preference to physios - so it is a concern for all of us. One of our biggest threats is the broadening of govt body that regulates the standard of physiotherapy may be expanded to include massage therapist and the like. this could in the long term end up pushing physios out of main stream medicine, which could be very destructive to the development of the profession as a whole, both in public and private sectors.

So may be in larger countries a split is more feasible but to me it sounds short sited. We have much more that unites us than divides us and as such we have to accept that our professional associations won't always be solely focused on our own particular sector's wishes. - this is a two-way road; Public sector members can also feel marginalised at times.

One of our biggest problems is our lack of political power to influence health policy - this is so even in larger countries with highly developed physiotherapy workforces: USA, Australia and the UK. to me in would seem unhelpful to split ourselves up.