How do your conscious or unconscious biases affect your ability to provide safe and effective care for patients?
If you work in a private practice setting, think about your office for a minute.
Do you have posters for promotion or décor? Do you have gym equipment? Is there any chance that these décor elements might intimidate obese, disabled or elderly patients?
Hospital clinics can have some of the same design elements. Images intended to inspire could have quite the opposite effect. Is it possible that your décor makes patients hesitant to attend appointments or discouraged about their prospects for recovery?
Décor, while tangible, is the least of the ways that your own feelings or beliefs may have an impact on your ability to help your patients.
I was privileged to attend the World Congress for Physical Therapy last month and one of the sessions which most resonated for me was about critical thinking in physiotherapy.
One speaker, Jenny Setchell, studied stigmatism in physiotherapy. You can find an article she published called “What Has Stigma Got to Do with Physiotherapy?” here.
She shared an anecdote about attending an educational program intended to teach a particular technique for management of lower back pain. At the session, a colleague noted that it would be difficult to perform the technique on an obese person. Fair enough, and perhaps that opinion would not deter a physiotherapist from performing it anyway, but maybe it would make them less likely to recommend it, or to believe they could perform it well. Perhaps that patient would have fewer treatment options, not because of real physical barriers but because of an undetected stigmatism on the part of the physiotherapist.
Ms. Setchell talked about stigmatism for disability, mental illness and persistent pain, as well as obesity.
What do you think? Do you stigmatize patients? Or potential patients?
We’re worried that the images on our College website perpetuate some isms – and we’ve set a goal of attaining a more realistic picture of physiotherapy practice. Real PTs, real patients!
Contact us if you’d like to see yourself or your practice on our website at communications@collegept.org. We’re hoping to collect some new photos of real people over the next year to support all of you in identifying and managing your own isms.
Shenda’s Blog 
The Registrar is an idiot. So now she is saying if a physio is uncomfortable performing a manual technique on a client because of the physical restrictions of the situation ie: the small size of the therapist or the large size(or obese) of the client they are doing the client a disservice.
It sounds like if the Registrar is informed of this type of situation she may move forward is prosecuting the physio for professional misconduct.
The CPO needs to stop enabling the general public and attempting to put ideas in their heads when there isn’t any actual problem. Perhaps the members of the public who may have an issue with the decor or wall posters should see a professional psychologist instead of the CPO implementing yet another administrative heavy policy that they force upon the membership.
Here is a novel thought, why doesn’t the CPO actually put their time, energy, and funding into properly assessing the membership in the field. This profession is an objective, hands on job and the CPO still believes that doing a ” paper assessment / chart review / interview ” is the way they should ensure the members are qualified in the field.
No other professional organization has an oral, subjective assessment tool for a client centric , objective occupation. Put some energy into ensuring from the point of the therapist and client contact onwards that the members are treating their patients with the upmost respect, dignity, and education that is expected of a Physiotherapist. Just asking questions and looking over paperwork is not for filling the CPO’s role as a professional governing body.
Stop wasting everyone’s time with worrying what’s on the God damn walls.
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I couldn’t agree with you more. Maybe it’s time for the CPO to have a new Registrar. She seems to be somewhat incompetent and is wasting the college’s funds on topics that are irrelevant to the general public. I’ve heard that she will actually move forward with prosecuting physios if a complaint is made against them that is unfounded. All to prove that she is needed and the college is needed to “protect” the public. It is a self for filling prophecy (and a massive conflict of interest – not to mention a huge power imbalance against the member from the college) that the Registrar can partake in investigations against the membership in order to show that she is “needed” to govern the physiotherapists. Self governing bodies like the CPO should have a maximum amount of time that the executive, including the Registrar, can hold their positions in order to not loose sight on what their roles actually should be.
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Great insight. It all boils down to professionalism, being objective towards patients, and focusing on our job.
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