Patty Thille - 30 DoS - Day 11

Tell us a little about your current work and study, especially how you think and practice critically

My research program brings feminist and other critical sociological theories to health services and health professions education research. My passion is to do research that enables us to better understand and disrupt stigmatization and discrimination in health services, particularly in the primary care and primary health care sectors. I do so using a range of qualitative methodologies.

To me, practicing critically means applying my critical theory foundation both outward and inward. Looking outward, critical theory is a foundation for my research, and through supervision, I aim to support others on this path. Turning inward, I continually seek out opportunities to learn and reflect, through both solo activities as well as through building relationships with people and joining communities also engaged in this work.

What do you bring to the CPN?

I bring a feminist and sociological background to the dialogues we are having within CPN. I continue to develop as a qualitative methodologist, and enjoy helping others think through the possibilities for their own work. And I also offer a more personal sort of knowledge, about navigating academia as a ‘hybrid’ scholar, with training in both health and social sciences. I aim to act as a bridge between the two, but this liminality creates its own challenges. Community helps manage that.

How would you like to see the critical physiotherapy community develop over the next few years?

I would like us to find ways to together engage with ideas and important issues around equity and other important topics. The pandemic has disrupted some of our usual ways of connecting, but also enabled others.

How would you like to see the broader physiotherapy profession develop?

Reiterating the challenge described by Nicholls and Gibson in the article The body and physiotherapy,  I would like to see a physiotherapy practice that seriously integrates theories of embodiment to enrich and enliven practice. To add to that, I hope we also concern ourselves with emplacement, which I think of as appreciating that people/bodies (for we are always both)  both shape and are shaped by the places in which we live our lives, and the social relationships we have in those places. Physiotherapy is an embodied, relational, and emplaced practice – foundational ideas which I think remain underdeveloped in our profession (at least, in the physiotherapy education and practice here). 

With better integration, we can better explore ethical and moral aspects of physiotherapy practice.  And these are the conversations I think are so important to our profession.