Who writes a physiotherapy blog anyway?

I suppose if you’re going to start a blog about physiotherapy the first question you need to ask is ‘why are there so few good critical blogs about the profession?’ It can’t be because blogs are so new that we haven’t caught up on the trend yet, or that physiotherapists are any more technophobic than anyone else in hyperspace. Nor can we say that physiotherapy is any less worthy than medicine, nursing, psychology, acupuncture or osteopathy, or any of the other health professions, to close critical scrutiny.

Granted, it’s not a particularly common thing for people within their own professions to write critically about their work, and even less so to think that this should be available to everyone in cyberspace. There is an unwritten code drilled into all health professionals that is closely tied in with their notions of professionalism, that one doesn’t air one’s dirty linen in public. And so, naturally, debate about the past, present and future of the profession happens rather quietly, if at all, in poorly attended branch meetings, and in the grey-walled offices of profession’s burghers.

So why write a blog about physiotherapy? Well simply because there are things to be said about the profession that ought to be aired; that the internet is a fabulous vehicle for debate and discussion and physiotherapy is desperately in need of being opened up; and because physiotherapy is finally starting to cast off its excessively disciplined, body-centric approach to health.

So this blog will have few sacred cows, and will at times be polemic. It will be subjective and opinionated. I make no apology if the writing is a bit sloppy at times…blogs were never meant to be fully formed prose; I write articles for that.

I hope you find the ideas interesting, and feel completely free to post feedback. I’ll post it on line if its publishable!

First published by Dave Nicholls (via www.criticalphysio.me) on 24 July 2011

If you'd like to contribute a post to the Critical Physiotherapy Network blog - we'd love to hear from you. Please contact Dave Nicholls with thoughts about what you'd like to blog about (you’ll find his details in the list of CPN members). And if you've never blogged before - don't let that put you off... there are people from within the network who'd be very happy to help.