reply to phyzzio:
U right about the training programmes in europe...To be more specific in Greece is 7 semesters (3 and a half duration) and 1 semester of clinical practice as applicant in a public hospital.Also it is true that as far as Greece concerned, the educational programme in physio school in Greece is of a low-level because we dont study the most recent scientific evidence in our profession..For example is almost ridicilous that when i was in physio scholl we get stuck on passive modalities so much, when in the meantime its clinical value and validity has discarded in a huge percent!! U got the point??? We never get through of the most recent evolutions and as far as i know from people who study THIS TIME physio in Greece, they are been taught the same stuff!!!!
But from my personal view this situation does not have to limit us in a passive role in practicing...When i graduated and start working as employee in other clinics and rehab centers i was just applying treatment without evaluate and assess what i was doing to patient...By taking McKenzie courses and finally the certificate on the Method (Cert.MDT) a new horizon had opened in front of me....I first learned the word "DIAGNOSIS" in my clinical context...And if u can diagnosed (of course i dont mean diagnosis as a physician can do, but diagnosis in MECHANICAL problems which are the majority in what we see in clinical practice) of course u can be more effective in TREATMENT....U can know what the prognosis will be, u can even know when u will come to a "plateau" in your treatment...And the most important is to recognize early which patients are CONTRAINDICATED for physical therapy....The so called "red-flags"....I ve seen that many times, when a patient comes to my clinic, he is "misdiagnosed" by his physician, and through the evaluation procedures we can see that a serious pathology is beyond his "mechanical" pain....Its not my duty to SPECIFY the patholgy but it is my duty to refer the patient to a specialist physician for further evaluation...
We are not here to play doctors but i think that each physio can take the RESPONIBILITY of a patient from the start (provided that he has a proper scientific base)...If we insist on just executing physician referrals whithout knowledge of what we especially doing with the treatment that they have described, then we take our profession many decades ago as gcoe said....We OURSELVES,through proper practice can firstly get the profession many levels higher and then comes the rest!!