The Physical Therapy Prescription...a Recipe for Insanity

This recent "guideline" on PT published in American Family Physician is another scary reminder of the branding issues we face as a profession. This reminds me of Mark Schwall's recent comment to this post begging for the insanity to stop regarding perceptions that "physical therapy" is actually a treatment. I liked what he had to say and pasted his response to the previous post because it applies perfectly to this article:

"When will the insanity stop? Physical Therapy is a profession not a treatment. What these badly titled articles demonstrate is that a "Physical Therapy" treatment does not work maybe. This is no different that saying "Medicine" doesn't work for treating angina when the treatment was prescribing Pennicillin instead of Nitroglycerin. We (Physical Therapists collectively) are as guilty as anybody in our generic use of the term in communications.

Ok everybody say after me "Physical Therapy is a profession not a treatment, Physical Therapy is a profession not a treatment...."

Similar to the sciatica paper, this "guideline" further erroneously brands PT as a grab bag of interventions to be randomly applied in a "prescriptive" manner based on the whim of a physician, most of whom have little to no clue as to the real identity of a Physical Therapist.

John

Comments

[Chinese Food Recipes]

this physical therapy looks good

[Bob]

I was considering a career as a PT until I read that American Family Physician article. Then I looked up a couple of on-line PT prescription forms. My God! Seems PTs, after 3 yrs intensive school, don't get to make ANY decisions, even the most mundane, unless authorized by an MD! Not only diagnosis (makes sense for MD to handle that), but frequency & duration of treatment, even specific procedures or exercises! No wonder PTs want direct access...though of course that's only for the small minority of patients who are fee-for-service. What decisions, exactly, can PTs make, other than those allowed to them by individual MDs?