David A Nicholls

Most people are so familiar with the idea of professions that it would be hard to imagine life without them. And yet, the professions we know today are a relatively recent invention. Although physiotherapy may not have achieved the extraordinary levels of privilege and prestige enjoyed by medicine, it still has three-quarters of a million respected and valued practitioners worldwide, and is, in many ways, the model of a modern health profession. But physiotherapy is also facing unprecedented challenges, and calls for reform are now widespread. Global healthcare is on the cusp of a cultural, economic, social, and technological revolution, and entering a new post-professional era. Physiotherapy will be affected in profoundly important ways in the coming years, but, to date, we have precious few tools to help us navigate the change. The story of how physiotherapy arrived here was the subject of The End of Physiotherapy (Routledge, 2017). Physiotherapy Otherwise builds on this work, bringing a century of social theory to our understanding of the profession. The book explores what the professions are, what they do in society, what's good about them, and what's bad, and applies all of this to physiotherapy today. By taking the reader from our earliest sociological understandings of the professions to the cutting edge of contemporary thinking, Physiotherapy Otherwise is both a primer on sociology and a critical course in a new way to understand our profession and our practice.

Physiotherapy 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 future for the profession. The book draws on critical analyses of the historical and social conditions that have made present-day physiotherapy possible. Nicholls examines some of the key discourses that have had a positive impact on the profession in the past, but now threaten to derail it. This book makes it possible for physiotherapists to think otherwise about their profession and their day-to-day practice. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of physiotherapy, interprofessional and community rehabilitation, as well as appealing to those working in medical sociology, the medical humanities, medical history and health care policy.

Physiotherapy 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 future for the profession. The book draws on critical analyses of the historical and social conditions that have made present-day physiotherapy possible. Nicholls examines some of the key discourses that have had a positive impact on the profession in the past, but now threaten to derail it. This book makes it possible for physiotherapists to think otherwise about their profession and their day-to-day practice. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of physiotherapy, interprofessional and community rehabilitation, as well as appealing to those working in medical sociology, the medical humanities, medical history and health care policy.