18 Five of the best
This activity seems simple on the surface but it’s harder than you’d think.
It focuses on the functionalist idea that each profession has distinctive characteristics, or traits, and that the healthcare system works best when everyone’s distinctive traits dovetail neatly together and there is consensus between each of the professions.
Of course, this depends on everyone knowing what makes their own profession distinctive in the first place.
Do this activity with someone who isn’t a physiotherapist: a family member or someone from another healthcare profession, for instance.
Method
Firstly, list what each of you separately consider to be the five defining traits of physiotherapy. Ask yourself what sets physiotherapy apart from all of the other healthcare professions.
When you have five things, swap your list with your partner and each of you cross out the one trait on the other person’s list that you think is the weakest, least accurate or distinctive. Now give the reduced list back to the person who originally wrote it.
Each person then replaces the crossed out characteristic/trait with a stronger, more accurate, or more descriptive trait. Swap again, crossing out the characteristic/trait that is now the weakest. Then again, give it back.
Repeat this process for five full rounds.
Prompt
At the end of the process you should have:
- A strong list of defining physiotherapy traits
- A realisation of just how hard it is to define exactly what it is that makes physiotherapy distinctive
In all likelihood, you will find it really hard to come up with traits that are unique and distinctive to physiotherapy, and you may not be able to complete five rounds.
Ask yourself, what does this tell us about:
- The functionalist belief that a profession is defined by its unique attributes?
- The belief that physiotherapy is an autonomous profession with an independent identity all of its own?
