Idea 21: Develop a critical glossary of terms (3 mins)
Every day during September we will post up an idea for you to vote on. The most popular ideas will become the things that the inaugural Organizing Committee of the Critical Physiotherapy Network focuses on in 2015. So please make sure you cast your vote at the bottom of each post.
One of our members - Hani Vitelson (Israel) - suggested that the Network might develop a glossary of terms and ideas to challenge the profession to think differently about some of the concepts that we take for granted. Two years ago, the WCPT launched it's own glossary for the profession (see here), but this provides some guidance on professional rather than practical matters. (It includes sections on prescribing, prevention and private practice, for example, but nothing on pain).
Many other glossaries exist to define key concepts in health care, but few offer to interpret these concepts from physiotherapy perspectives. We all know that the body, for example, is a major issue for the profession, but you would be hard pressed to find a simple explanation for our understanding(s) of the body, in comparison to those held by nurses, doctors, engineers or furniture makers.
One of the problems with glossaries is that they tend to consolidate: they aspire to smoothe out differences between ideas and arrive at a common consensus. Our glossary might be different: it might be a place where rival viewpoints are made available to be viewed, explored and analysed. This would be a more critical proposition and certainly a challenging one, but a really necessary one for the profession all the same.
So should we develop our own critical glossary of terms?
Post update: please note that voting closed on 7 October 2014 (results are available here), but please feel free to post your comments in the space below.