physiotherapy blogs

Ok so it's boring doing blogs rather than doing most other things but it's somewhat surprising that when I searched Google for "physiotherapy blogs" this one came up on first page. So what should my reaction be? Maybe a feeling of dispair that physios (or physical therapists) seem to concentrate their blogging efforts into a limited number of sites and that little has changed from when I pursed this with some enthusiasm 1 year ago. So this is perhaps a test to see if the blog should hibernate for another year. 1 year on from the bulk of the activity I'm a bit jaded by politics in the NHS so mabe I should write some things about physical therapy itself, to be understood by those within the profession.

It's interesting to see how within the profession treatment trends come and go. In the UK the use of electrotherapy is in rapid decline within the NHS. This probably came about partly because the dogmatic pronouncements of its supporters in the 1980s were not based on high quality research but on cherry picked ideas within other areas of clinical research which were then adapted to physical therapy. A deeply engrained issue within the profession in the UK is the all persuasive power of clinical experience , above all other forms of knowledge. Therefore a new therapy is adported not on the basis of overwhelming research but on the basis of demonstrating that patients report benefit from its use. Reflection over the history of the profession shows trends in the popularity of different treatments whch have taken over from older ones. This has occurred not because of large high quality studies but because of the novelty value of new ideas which then appear to give results in clinical practice.The process of new idea adoption, supposed clinical results, peak popularity and decline is demonstrated by the majority of the therapeutic modalities within phyical therapy. Yesterday's treatment was electrotherapy; what is today's?

first post for a year

Why are you spending time looking at blogs instead of going out into the real world?