Hi ATT,
I understand where your coming from regarding the situation in ireland. There's too much striation in our own profession - between the clinical interest groups, public/private and between those dealing with sports people as a whole. With sports you either have (not solely) 1) those working full-time hospital -week-ends with teams for extra money
2) those in privat practice interested in how many patients they see a day, 3) those who commit to a team/club and continue to try to improve their service to sports people.

A huge problem in ireland is the lack of chartered physios willing to work in sports due to the long and unsociable hours that go with it. this has left the door wide open for other "therapists" to clean up as the "PHYSIO" for clubs both locally and provincially. So much so the public don't even know the difference.

As has been said in this thread earlier - Promotion is vital.Currently workin inAustralia i can see the public have a greater understanding of the role of the physio and benefits to them, what they can and can't do and as such is a more stand-alone profession.

However unless the clinical interest groups start recognising eachothers specialities and referring on accordingly - the public will continue to think that every physio is the same, and when a less experienced physio can't help, the patient writes the profession off as a whole and heads for the alternatives (literally)

I agree a basic life support/spinal care cert should be manditory, but it think that regardless whether a physio - massseuse- NMT etc. What i think WE should do is give our new grads etc a boost, a basic course ensuring accurate diagnosis/injury management, along with other practacilities you don't learn in college. with a clear strategy for professional development. The accreditation is a big step - have many other countries begun this?

I think as a profession we have not realised half of our potential overall, and i have no doubt we can - however we need to do it soon before other "professions" start picking bits and pieces of the profession for their own and we lose what hope we had of independence (sorry if this is a rant)