Physiotherapy
physiotherapy in many English speaking countries is a health care profession which provides services to individuals in order to develop maintain and restore maximum movement and functional ability throughout life. This includes providing services in circumstances where movement and function are threatened by aging, injury, disease or environmental factors.
Physical therapy is concerned with identifying and maximizing quality of life and movement potential within the spheres of promotion, prevention, treatment/intervention, habilitation and rehabilitation. This encompasses physical, psychological, emotional, and social well being. It involves the interaction between physical therapist (PT), patients/clients, other health professionals, families, care givers, and communities in a process where movement potential is assessed and goals are agreed upon, using knowledge and skills unique to physical therapists.
Physical therapy is performed by either a physical therapist (PT) or an assistant (PTA) acting under their direction. PTs utilize an individual's history and physical examination to arrive at a diagnosis and establish a management plan, and when necessary, incorporate the results of laboratory and imaging studies.
Electro diagnostic testing (e.g. electromyograms and nerve conduction velocity testing) may also be of assistance. Physical therapy has many specialties including cardiopulmonary, geriatrics, neurologic, orthopaedic and paediatrics to name some of the more common areas. PTs practice in many settings, such as outpatient clinics or offices, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities, extended care facilities, private homes, education and research centres, schools, hospices, industrial workplaces or other occupational environments, fitness centres and sports training facilities.
Educational qualifications vary greatly by country. The span of education ranges from some countries having little formal education to others requiring masters or doctoral degrees. History Physicians like Hippocrates and later Galenus are believed to have been the first practitioners of physical therapy, advocating massage, manual therapy techniques and hydrotherapy to treat people in 460 B.C. The earliest documented origins of actual physical therapy as a professional group date back to Per Henrik Ling “Father of Swedish Gymnastics” who founded the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics (RCIG) in 1813 for massage, manipulation, and exercise.
The Swedish word for physical therapist is “sjukgymnast” = “sick-gymnast.” In 1887, PTs were given official registration by Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare. Other countries soon followed. In 1894 four nurses in Great Britain formed the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy. The School of Physiotherapy at the University of Otago in New Zealand in 1913, and the United States' 1914 Reed College in Portland, Oregon, which graduated "reconstruction aides. Research catalyzed the physical therapy movement.
The first physical therapy research was published in the United States in March 1921 in The PT Review. In the same year, Mary McMillan organized the Physical Therapy Association (now called the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA).
In 1924, the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation promoted the field by touting physical therapy as a treatment for Polio Treatment through the 1940s primarily consisted of exercise, massage, and traction. Manipulative procedures to the spine and extremity joints began to be practiced, especially in the British Commonwealth countries, in the early 1950s.
Later that decade, physical therapists started to move beyond hospital based practice, to outpatient orthopaedic clinics, public schools, college/universities, geriatric settings (skilled nursing facilities), rehabilitation centres, hospitals, and medical centres. Specialization for physical therapy in the U.S. occurred in 1974, with the Orthopaedic Section of the APTA being formed for those physical therapists specializing in Orthopaedics. In the same year, the International Federation of Orthopaedic Manipulative Therapy was formed, which has played an important role in advancing manual therapy worldwide ever since.