Description
Book SynopsisPhysiotherapy is arriving at a critical point in its history. Since World War I, physiotherapy has been one of the largest allied health professions and the established provider of orthodox physical rehabilitation. But ageing populations of increasingly chronically ill people, a growing scepticism towards biomedicine and the changing economy of healthcare threaten physiotherapy's long-held status. Paradoxically, physiotherapy's affinity for treating the body-as-machine' has resulted in an almost complete inability to identify the roots of the profession's present problems, or define possible ways forward. Physiotherapists need to engage in critically informed theoretical discussion about the profession's past, present and future - to explore their practice from economic, philosophical, political and sociological perspectives.
The End of Physiotherapy aims to explain how physiotherapy has arrived at this critical point in its history, and to point to a new fu
Table of Contents
PART I 1 Introduction; 2 Physical therapies before 1894; 3 The quest for legitimacy (1894–1914); 4 The pursuit of orthodoxy (1914–1973); 5 Physiotherapy under neoliberalism (1973–present); PART II; 6 The body; 7 Posture and movement; 8 Function and rehabilitation; PART III; 9 Implications for education, practice, regulation and research; 10 The end of physiotherapy; Epilogue: Methodology.
