Hi Monkey,

Sorry, i didn't know that there actually were people called "monkey" working as physiotherapists - so i retract my statement about monkeys

Secondly, I agree with what you have written - and just so that you know that i have a balanced and fair perspective, i will let you know that there was a recent study that showed that LASER with MT/x was better than MT alone or x alone or something like that (don't have reference on me - on a different computer at the moment).

My main point is that as physiotherapists, our perception in the community is that all we do is massage and put people on machines. Every week, i have lots of new patients asking if what i just did for their treatment was 'physiotherapy' because many other physios that they had seen in the past just gave them some heat, massage and put on I/F (and some home exercises).

THe main point of the assessment IS to provide a provisional diagnosis and then provide appropriate treatment based on your assessment. And in some cases, all you can do is put someone on a machine for pain relief. HOWEVER, in my experience, this is the exception rather than the rule. Most people will try to put up with their pain for a little while so it is not often that you have someone fall in your doorway just from the pain (which has happened to me recently - i helped him across the road to see the GP because there was nothing i could do for him).

In some ways i am happy for the physios in my area to keep doing the same thing because i will then have a clear point-of-difference which will give me a competitive advantage however for the profession of physiotherapy, i would much rather a more sophisticated, multimodal, personally modifed, holistic approach to treatment.

I kid you not, people actually say that physios just work on the muscles, chiros work on your spine and joints. We are not very good at marketing ourselves!