72 Something we own

The post-professional era has heightened people’s anxiety that practices and ideas we once claimed as our own are being lost to others, who are happily expanding their professional territories and influence at our expense. The worry is that physiotherapists will be left with little that we can truly call their own.*

But who actually ‘owns’ anything in healthcare?

Do physiotherapists ‘own’ massage, cognitive functional therapy, bodyweight supported treadmill training, or hydrotherapy?

Activity
Consider your everyday practice.
Make a list of the different physiotherapy-specific modalities, technologies, approaches, concepts and ideas that you draw on regularly. (Perhaps take one day at work as your baseline?)
From this list, highlight anything that is exclusive to physiotherapy in your locality.
From this reduced list, highlight anything that is exclusive to physiotherapy nationally and internationally. (Remember, this could be a type of practice or an idea, an approach to practice, or anything else.)
Finally, from this list, highlight anything that has been exclusive to physiotherapy throughout it’s professional history.

What is on the list?

Reflection
I would imagine the list is very small.
Part of this is due to the fact that physiotherapy is based on modalities like touch, movement, exercise, heat and cold, that are thousands of years old. And its ways of working are largely borrowed from medicine, which has a long and successful history of practical thought and work. So much of what’s in physiotherapy is borrowed from elsewhere.
In truth, there is very little in physiotherapy that is original, and there are few true radicals and inventors in the profession.
Perhaps then we should see ourselves as custodians of certain practices and knowledges rather than owners?
And if that’s the case, does it matter who looks after the physical therapies as long as they take care of them and practice them well?

*Within the literature, every single healthcare profession is expressing the same anxiety, so this problem isn’t unique to physiotherapy.