The Profession of Physiotherapy
In celebration of World Physiotherapy Day on Wednesday 8th September, this week’s blog is all about the profession of physiotherapy.
What is physiotherapy?
Physiotherapy is an allied health profession which employs physical treatment techniques and modalities to restore, maintain and improve health, function, performance and well-being.
Allied health means that a physiotherapist will work alongside other health care professionals involved in a patient’s care, as a member of that patient’s multi-disciplinary healthcare team. This might include your G.P., your surgeon, your coach, your psychologist and a wide range of other health professionals.
Physiotherapists are experts in assessing, problem solving and treating issues which have an adverse effect on normal and healthy movement, function and quality of life.
As an undergraduate student, each physiotherapist is required to gain comprehensive theoretical and practical skills working across the three core areas of human healthcare – musculoskeletal physiotherapy, neurological physiotherapy and cardiovascular physiotherapy.
Physiotherapists spend up to four years fine tuning their understanding of the application of physiotherapy in each of these core areas and will spend a minimum of 1000 hours on supervised clinical placement in the hospital and community rehabilitation settings. Early in a physiotherapists career, they will likely spend a few years rotating as a junior physiotherapist throughout a range of clinical areas, consolidating their knowledge and clinical reasoning skills. As a physiotherapist becomes more experienced and advances in their career pathway, they are likely to focus on and specialise within a particular clinical area.
Physiotherapy is a very interesting profession in that there are many different specialities nestled under the umbrella term of physiotherapy, including but not limited to the following areas:
Musculoskeletal physiotherapy
Orthopaedic physiotherapy
Neurological physiotherapy
Cardiovascular physiotherapy
Women’s and men’s health physiotherapy
Paediatrics physiotherapy
Lymphoedema physiotherapy
Aged care physiotherapy
Pain management physiotherapy
Animal Physiotherapy – small animal physiotherapy and equestrian physiotherapy
What is a physiotherapist?
The title 'physiotherapist' is a protected title. To gain a qualification in physiotherapy, a physiotherapist must complete an undergraduate degree or postgraduate study in physiotherapy. In addition, they must register with the physiotherapy board of their country of practice. In Australia, this regulatory board is AHPRA, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.
In order to maintain registration with AHPRA, a physiotherapist must commit to the following:
Undertaking a specified amount of continuing professional development each year - ensuring each physiotherapist keeps their knowledge up to date and is aware of the emerging research which guides their practice.
Physiotherapists must complete a specified number of hours per year of clinical practice with patients.
Commit to a code of conduct and code of practice.
Carry adequate professional indemnity insurance to practice.
What to expect from your Physiotherapy session?
Whether it is your first consultation or your last, your physio will start with a history – a chat about you, your health and well-being.
During the initial consultation, your physiotherapy will ask you all about your history, relative to the reason you are seeking physiotherapy. Important information includes:
Why you are seeking the assistance of a physiotherapist – tell us about the main problem, or problems, which are impacting your ability to live life the way you want to and do the things you want to do.
Exploring the history of your problem – what are your symptoms, how and when did your problem start and how are your symptoms progressing since – for example, are your symptoms improving, reached a plateau or getting worse?
Exploring your main problem – what are you experiencing? When, where and what makes it better or worse?
Discuss your medical history – your general health and what you have experienced in the past is important and may well be relevant to your current injury or health concern.
Discuss investigations, medications, other therapy you have tried to date and how that worked for you.
Explore your current level of exercise, fitness routine (or lack of!), sports and activities you enjoy – explore how your main problems are affecting your ability to do the things you value and enjoy.
Explore your current lifestyle and how your problem is affecting life – work life, social life and how you are felling about life too!
Your goals – what do you want to get out of your own sessions and what is it that you want to achieve, both in the short term and in the long term?
For some people, this could take a few minutes. For others, this could take much longer – such is how unique and individual each of us is.
Next step, your physiotherapist will use their ‘physio brain’ to put the pieces of your health puzzle together and figure out a treatment plan best suited for you, taking your needs and preferences into account and combining this with our knowledge as to what the current research and up to date clinical guidelines tells us is best practice. This process is called clinical reasoning and is a skill built up over many years.
So what will treatment look like for you? It depends on your story. But things you will expect to find it the physio ‘toolbox’ include the following:
Advice and education – to empower you. It’s important that you understand what is happening with your body, that you know what to expect and that you understand what you can do to help improve your situation yourself.
Movement based therapy – an individualised and progressive home exercise program. Homework!
A range of physical therapy modalities to help you move and feel better, such as the following:
Manual therapy – joint manipulation and mobilisation
Massage
Dry needling
Electrotherapy
Taping and strapping
Prescription of rehabilitation aids and equipment
Allied health referrals – your physiotherapist may recommend you see another member of your health care team for specific care e.g., your G.P., medical specialist, radiographer, speech therapist, occupational therapist, psychologist or your coach or personal trainer. The best care often involves a team approach, especially for more complex health needs.
Outcome measures – your physiotherapist will choose a means (or two) of measuring your progress from session to session, to make sure that what we are doing is actually making a difference. If you are not improving, then the treatment plan needs to change. If you are improving, then super!
If you would like to learn more about physiotherapy and your health, keep in touch with our weekly blog posts where we will explore physiotherapy, a variety of health topics as well as established and emerging research.
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