CPN update - November 2015
We have our monthly CPN Executive video conference on Friday this week, and it's been a while since we updated you on some of the things we're doing and some of the projects that we're involved in, so here's a quick summary:
Friday's meeting will be the first with two new members. Viviana Guerrero and Michael Rowe joined Barbara Gibson, Simon Kirkegaard, Gwyn Owen, Dave Nicholls, Jenny Setchell and Nicky Wilson on the Exec last month. Viviana is a doctoral candidate and Senior Research Assistant at Griffith University’s Centre of National Research on Disability and Rehabilitation in Australia. (You will have seen some of her work recently with the Spanish translations we've been able to post on the blog.) And Michael is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physiotherapy at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, with a special interest in curriculum development and new approaches to learning and teaching. Both will bring new experiences, insights and ideas to the group, as well as the obligatory chocolate cake recipes and suggestions for exotic overseas holiday meetings for the Executive.
There has been an enormous amount of work on the website over the last few months. When the CPN started, we relied on email and a very crude blog to communicate with the group. Because we grew so fast, we needed a new website that could do more things. So we moved to a paid Wordpress site in July, and have been building up its capacity ever since. We had a review of the site at our October Exec meeting and have been busy all month making changes behind the scenes. If you've ever done any website development work, you'll know that most of the work takes place away from the public gaze, and that's certainly the case here. We do a lot of testing and trialling of new resources and services before you get to see them, to make sure they are as stable and reliable as possible. We're thinking about the long term now, so want to build things that are enduring and sustainable and cause you least disruption. I would like to thank our fabulous web developers, including Jo Bloggs (yes, that is a pseudonym), for their fantastic work over the last wee while. As with all things to do with the CPN, their time and expertise is given freely, and for that we're immensely grateful.
Our first venture into collaborative writing has been successful, with our paper Connectivity: An emerging concept for physiotherapy practice due for publication soon in Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. We had an international writing team of eight authors from six countries on the paper: Karen Atkinson (UK), Wenche Bjorbækmo (Norway), Barbara Gibson (Canada), Julie Latchem (UK), Jens Olesen (Denmark), Dave Nicholls (New Zealand), Jenny Ralls (UK) and Jenny Setchell (Australia), and completed the work from start to finish in just over six months. Here is the abstract for the paper:
[su_quote]Having spent their first century anchored to a biomedical model of practice, physiotherapists have been increasingly interested in exploring new models and concepts that will better equip them for serving the health care needs of 21st century patients. Connectivity offers one such model. With an extensive philosophical background in phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, structuralism and postmodern research, connectivity resists the prevailing western biomedical view that health professionals should aim to increase people’s independence and autonomy, preferring instead to identify and amplify opportunities for collaboration and co-dependence. Connectivity critiques the normalisation that underpins modern health care, arguing that our constant search for deviance is building stigma and discrimination into our everyday practice. In this paper we provide a background to the place connectivity may play in future health care, and most especially future physiotherapy practice. The paper examines some of the philosophical antecedents that have made connectivity an increasingly interesting and challenging concept in health care today.[/su_quote]
Flushed with the success of our first writing adventure, our next project was obviously going to be something much bigger! In July we sent out a call for anyone who was interested in writing a book notionally titled Critical Studies in Physiotherapy. Typical of people in the CPN, we were overwhelmed with the response. We had 30 offers of chapters, and identified 30 more potential authors. To manage the process we asked for people who might form a Scoping Committee to plan the proposal and had 16 replies. The Scoping Committee have been pulling the book proposal together and the book's editors (Barbara Gibson, Karen Synne Groven, Dave Nicholls and Nikky Petty) will meet next week to formalise our plans and make a proposal to the Network for the next steps. We've received 25 formal abstract submissions and the breadth and quality of the work is astonishing. Who knew there were so many amazing critical physiotherapists out there!
Plans to meet up in 2016 are underway, with the strong possibility of some members getting together at the 4th European Congress of the European Region of the World Confederation of Physical Therapy (ER-WCPT) in Liverpool next year (link). After that we have WCPT in South Africa and the In Sickness and In Health conference in Sydney in 2017 to look forward to. WCPT have been doing some really great consultation with members, and there is a real sense that they are looking for a different direction for the conference and the profession, and a number of CPN members are involved in WCPT and are helping with the organisation and development of the congress where they can.
As always, there is a lot going on, but we've always got one eye on the basic function of the CPN - to be a positive force for an otherwise physiotherapy - and trying to find ways to do that is always great fun. If you aren't a member, by all means join (its free), or if you know of someone who would like to know more about the Network, send them this link (www.criticalphysio.net). If you have a good idea, want to find some information, make a connection with someone in the group, or become more involved, send a comment to this post or send an email to me directly (david.nicholls@aut.ac.nz)...I'll make sure it's followed up.
The summer is coming to New Zealand (sorry everyone in the cold and windy North), so it will soon by time to pack up the computer and head to the beach. In the meantime, keep in touch and thanks for all of your support.
Dave Nicholls
AUT University, Auckland, NZ