physiotherapist & physical medicine/rehab physicians

[pudding_bowl]

Yup we are lucky here in New Zealand - we have first practitioner rights. A patient can choose to come to the physio without any referral and we will treat them appropriately. That is key, appropriate treatment. Our physio board and training scemes are heavily focussed on providing a 'no harm' service. And if you can do some good then all the better. What it boils down to is that we have a training which has a heavy component covering typical non-physio presentations and clinical reasoning such that we can identify when a patient has come to physio inappropriately and requires a referral on to an appropriate provider.
We certainly have supervision from without our profession if it is required (e.g. for new graduates), but there is no PMR team telling us what to do.
Any more questions about the NZ system are encouraged - I'm quite proud of it really when I think of other places in the world that don't have the same rights.

[quorthon]

i recalled an interview from Grant Watson on a greek physio magazine, where he was talking about the fact in NZ insurance companies have direct negotations with physios about therapy costs and compensations....This is also great, and i am unhappy that in Greece the situation is not so favourable for our profession too.....The so called supervision from PMR doctors is not so heavy as aaaphysio says in Kuwait but if u working on a rehabilitation center u ultimately become a puppet on the hands of PMRs!not to mention that in order for a patient to get his money back from a physiotherapy treatment he must have a medical referral from the beginning.....of course many patients come DIRECTLY to us with no referral and they follow treatment according to our evaluation and principles with better outcomes.....The reason is simple why this happening....A classic referral from a doctor in greece is like that : "10 sessions of TENS,ULTRASOUND and DIATHERMY" They only prescribe 3 or 4 passive modalities and of course the patient cannot be cured by that,only...