Foreword to this Workbook edition of Physiotherapy Otherwise
In many ways, this workbook takes the Physiotherapy Otherwise project full circle. The book itself grew out of a postgraduate course I’ve run at Auckland University of Technology since 2018. The course, called Health Professional Practice, is designed to help experienced clinicians think deeply and critically about themselves as health professionals, their profession with its particular culture and history, and the many others that they work with. The course draws heavily on activity-based learning and the students are encouraged to break free from the traditional essay format in their assessment. There’s no constraints on the medium they can use. And people submit their work in all sorts of ways: some bake cakes, others write songs or crochet figures, some make sculptures and others dance.
Their work is often extraordinary, but it takes a lot of effort and encouragement to get them to ‘let go’. Health professionals it seems are socialised from the very beginning to be conservative and conforming – the safety of their clients/patients often depends on it – but this makes them very tentative when it comes to being creative. Unfortunately, if there’s one trait healthcare systems around the world needs right now its creativity. We need people who can break free of convention and imagine something new. So to that end I developed a host of activities for the students on the course to help them to think differently; think ‘otherwise’ you might say. Some of those activities are included in this workbook.
In most cases the activities and prompts included in the book come directly from the course; from questions raised by the students or posed by me to them. They’re often ways of connecting with on some pretty meaty theory. As a result, the activities have been threaded through the text in the places where I’ve found they can have the biggest impact.
In addition to the activities, I’ve added pop-out boxes throughout the text to provoke further questions and reflection. The orange boxes are specific to the chapter and are in line with the particular issue being discussed. At the end of each chapter there is a green box which includes a set of deeper questions relating to the theory covered in the entire chapter. In both cases, these provocations, questions and reflections can be attacked by the reader on their own, in groups, or in class.
As with everything in this book, everything has been designed to be given away. So please feel free to try them, take them, redesign them, and use them in whatever way feels right. My hope is that they enrich the text of the book and enhance your desire to think physiotherapy otherwise.
I’d like to express my thanks to those people who helped make this workbook a reality, especially Sophie Baker, Donna Coventry and Tui Gordon at AUT; Paul Lagerman, Lindsay Skinner and Kate Waterworth for their helpful comments in review; and Connor Crawford for his lovely cover art. I’d also like to acknowledge the Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL) for the support and resources to make this workbook possible.
Dave Nicholls
March 2025
