Is Physiotherapy becoming a stronger profession or is it being diluted by others?

[f1progeny]

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)

[physiochile]

First, I think the physiotherapy is def becoming stronger ( sorry if i miss spell words all my physiotherapy studies have been in spanish, I will do my best), for example alot of your opinions are really helpful and this whole forum discussions are making us stronger as we go..... I think to make the profession stronger .. schools have to provide students with the right curriculum.... I have looked at some curriculums in the USA and they go to school for about 7 years to become a Physio but the first two years they take classes that arent really related to PT it self ..... It seems more like a business to me to keep students 7 years in school for PT .... in Chile for example it last 5 years with 1000 supervised clinical hours and a year of each area ( neuro, Trauma and respiratory) to me this seems good enough so this way they can do an specialization after...it makes me mad how americans are making up this doctorate degree of physical therapy when its the same degree that pt´s use to get in america 5 years ago .... the point I´m trying to make is that as long as the schools curriculums are made the right way things will keep growing for pts.

Another thing that I think its wrong about PT is that too many people are going into this career to make money and not to help people and those graduates that are into it for money become bad proffesionals and they make the rest of pts look bad...

[stanny]

I also think that physiotherapy is becoming stronger. Just after my accident I noticed how important it is. It gave me strength and hope and it was a big support during the long way of healing after all medical treatments in the hospital was over. I experienced it as something very personal and a mixture between physical help but also having someone to talk to.