Summer 2023 Supporting healthy clinics
Sustainability in physiotherapy
As with so many other businesses, too many physiotherapy practices are missing
considerations about ethical responsibility for anything beyond our individual actions. We all have
a responsibility to find ways in which we can protect our planet beyond the individual, and this
article asks the question; can we do more?
Aisling Condon
Taking care of YOU and the business side of your practice
Physiotherapists who choose to open their own practice might do so because they desire
more autonomy, free time or money. This article highlights some of the issues practice owners
face when embarking on their own business and how, by engaging with professional business
advice, physios can deliver the same care to themselves and their business, as they do to their
patients.
Celia Champion
Make social media work for your practice
Whatever our feelings about social media, and our preferences for some platforms over others,
one thing is certain; social media is here to stay. Some physios might already find Facebook or
LinkedIn a great way to stay in contact with patients or may have built a profile on Twitter or
Instagram to promote their physiotherapy services. Others, however, might be finding it hard to
understand how social media works and even harder to get traction on it. This article explains, through
the experiences of physio colleagues, how to harness social media in such a way that it becomes an
effective promotional tool for your business.
Chris Dann and Tor Davies
The Maitland concept: are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Arguably, hands-on mobilisations are as appropriate in the physiotherapists’ toolbox as they
have ever been. This article tracks the history of manual therapy and demonstrates how it still fits with
current clinical thinking, with the aim that readers will take the opportunity to critically reflect on their
use of hands-on skills within their own practices and, by improving on our manual therapy methods,
we can not only achieve better patient outcomes, but also preserve this skill for our profession.
Dominique Royle
PPEF feature: Early insight into current best practice for patellofemoral pain
This article aims to highlight how PPEF supports and promotes physiotherapy through grant
funding for research that has measurable impact for our clinical reasoning and treatment
outcomes. The overarching aim of this series of works was to produce an updated “best
practice guide” for patellofemoral pain that was designed using the AGREE instrument. This
translational article offers an early insight into current best practice for this challenging clinical
presentation to guide physiotherapists’ decision making through a summary of the three pieces of
empirical research that will be synthesised to create this future guide.
Dr Bradley Stephen Neal and Dr Simon David Lack
The student perception of private practice
Today’s physiotherapy students are the future of the profession. In particular, they are the
key to how physio skills are retained and enhanced, and how the most appropriate treatment
methods are delivered to patients to achieve their goals and best outcomes. In early 2021,
Physio First was invited to deliver a presentation to physiotherapy students at the University
of Winchester and this has since grown into an ongoing project which has enabled the
participating students and Physio First to learn how we can benefit one another.
Karen Chapman, Karen Lay and Paul Donnelly
The life and times of an ancient physiotherapist
Having worked in physiotherapy for 56 years, Physio First member Brian Simpson shares
some of his experiences of how our profession has developed and changed in that time; from his
early days working in the East End of London, to running his own successful private practice and
his involvement and volunteer roles for Physio First.