Looking back on disability
We’ve published just over 800 blogposts on the CPN site over the last six years. A few were just announcements, but a lot have been strong arguments for an otherwise physiotherapy covering a lot of different topics. So we thought we would bring some of the most popular, controversial, and challenging pieces together into a few themed issues.
Our plan is to build up some resources on the website around the particular subject matter so that people can have ready access to topics that have been important for us over recent years.
Today’s first compilation is on the subject of disability.
In October 2014, I wrote the first of a series of four blog posts on the topic of connectivity. The first was this one; Connectivity #1 - Critique of the medical and social model of disability. The post explained how connectivity offered a different approach to the medical and social models and referenced the first collaborative journal article published by members of the CPN. There are some great comments on this post too if you scroll to the bottom. You can find the second, third and fourth blog posts in the series by following these links: #2, #3, and #4.
The second blog post in this compilation was about chronic pain and explored the limits of the biomedical model - a common theme in CPN posts. The piece appeared in May 2015 and, again, featured some really great comments.
Related to this, in June 2015 we published a blog looking at Michael Oliver’s contribution to disability and his thoughts on the social model. Mike was a pioneering disruptor, and he kindly gave us some of his own explanations which we published here.
In February 2017 we published a post looking at the lack of attention to individuals’ identities in physiotherapy education and practice. Titled There is no ‘you’ in physiotherapy, we looked at how this lack of attention to individual subjectivity shaped our attitudes towards difference in others.
And finally, in March 2016 CPN member Karen Atkinson explained the work that went into the WCPTs briefing paper Access to physical therapist entry-level education and practice for persons with disability, concluding that ‘In our society of ableist assumptions and perfectible bodies – how great is it for patients to see therapists in whom they recognize themselves?’