Critical Physiotherapy Network is born!

Today is a momentous day!

After some weeks of planning, I am proud to announce the formal arrival of the Critical Physiotherapy Network.

For a long time now, I've been thinking about bringing together a group of critical-thinking physiotherapists from around the world who were interested in philosophy, history, cultural studies, sociology, qualitative research and education.

A few weeks ago I decided to step down from my role as Head of Physiotherapy at AUT University, and that induced me to think about some of the projects that were lying in wait ready for when I had more time.

So I began by contacting half-a-dozen colleagues I knew around the world who were critical thinkers, and asked them if they would be interested in forming a group, and if they could pass the invite on to others that they knew.  I thought we might be a small group of no more than a dozen like-minded colleagues.  How naive I was!

Within a few days, the snowball had gathered momentum and begun to roll off in all kinds of different directions.  I started getting responses from Scandinavia, the UK, Canada, and Australia, and a host of other corners of the world, and everyone spoke as if this was an idea whose time had come.

To date, we have 65 confirmed 'members' from 13 different countries with a further 25 being organised.

We've decided that we want the group to be accessible, supporting, fun and friendly, and we want to be a forum where people can feel comfortable expressing a diversity of ideas.

We're going to start by forming an organising committee and finding out a bit more about each other, because there are clearly more critical thinkers out there in physiotherapy than any one of us knew before.

At some point soon we'll organise a central repository for our information and resources, and send out invites to every jurisdiction to encourage practitioners, lecturers, researchers and students who think differently about physiotherapy to participate.  We'll be organising meetings, webinars, unconferences and the like, and looking for every opportunity to encourage physiotherapists to think differently about their profession.

So if this network sounds like it might appeal to you, contact me directly at david.nicholls@aut.ac.nz, or send a comment to this post and I'll be in touch.