Hi,

thank you for your comments and for this opportunity to open the web community for us. Glad to hear your are Australian trained, so I believe you can understand better.

The reason why the written exam to be recognised is so difficult is because it doesn't reflect the real standard of the Australian Universities. I had a journalist going around Perth, testing physiotherapists with some of the question samples provided by the exam organisation Acopra, now Australian Physiotherapy Council, which are far more simple than the real test we have to sit. The journalist wrote an article on the Sunday Times saying those physios had no idea about the possible answers.

The questions are tricky, so they are testing more our ability to solve puzzles than our knowledge. The questions'format is hard to understand even by English mother tongue candidates, including Australians trained overseas.

The questions are not always related to daily practice. This was in the last exam I have done (my third attempt): an old man goes out in the garden in dark hours, he stumbles on a bicycle, falls and gets a fracture of the femur. Question: what's the difference in the anatomy-physiology in the eye of an aged and a young person in the adjustment of the focus.

Why should I know it? How important is this for me as a physio for a correct and safe practice? And this is just an example. At that stage how can you prepare your exam, what do you have to study, where are the guidelines you have to follow?

They say this is the level new graduates have. Well, I have eight years of work experience in Italy, heaps of continuing education and a Master of Sports Physio in Australia. Can my standard be compromised if I can't answer that question?

In these three years I have been living in Perth, I have seen many physios working. In the hospitals they do administration job, writing heaps of notes and reports. In the private practices they use lots of electrotherapy because this allows them to squeeze lots of patients at the same time.

Luckily, I have met also great physios here and I reckon that in every country there are good and bad professionals. That's why it's not possible to assess someone's knowledge with the current system. Luck will decide if you pass or not.

There are very good schools in Europe for example. I can tell you that many European techniques are unknown here, especially French. I can tell you that Australian Universities don't teach how to rehab a facial paresis (which is good for me, I'll have heaps of clients).

And anyway, there are so many things not quite right in all this: the high fees to pay to cover the minimum cost of a charitable organisation Acopra that in 2005 got 400,000$ from overseas physios attempting the exams;the fact that overseas qualifications are accepted to attend postgrad Masters but not to work, because otherwise the Universities would cancel their courses as they are 95% attended by overseas students who pay 30% more fee; the fact that I can't have the exam back to see my mistakes and the poor feedback because the questions are "intellectual property";and more interesting stuff that you can find in my report to the Parliament at the link I have posted in my first message on this website.

The only exam we had back was the September 05, because of the Parliament pressure. But I had to sign a disclaimer so I can't show it to anyone unless for study purpose with the candidates.

Personally I have spent nearly 100,000$Au, three years of my life and I've been close to a nervous breakdown. Some people got serious problems (depression, divorces...). But after all this is what modern democracy produces all over the world, Italy included. Of course this is not the appropriate site to talk about politics, so let's stick to the profession.

To start to work now the law says I have to give training to students at my workplace. Amazing, I was a dangerous professional till last month, now I can teach.

I'll be very grateful if our group could have a space in this website. Our purpose is to give info, study material, contact details, advice and psychological support to whoever is interested in facing the procedure, with the intent to save people from the un-necessary crap we went through because of poor information.

I'll propose the issue to the group and I'll let you know as soon as I have some feedback. We always move all together and I prefer to inform all of them about what I do.

Thanks for your patience to read this long message and I hope you won't get any negativity from that, because I, we really aim to a change of the system in a positive way, so that it can be an advantage for overseas physios but also for the Australian community. Our messages won't be denigrating and won't attack anyone, I felt though that you had to be aware of some facts. We'll be very happy to help our colleagues.

Talk to you soon.
Emanuela