Physiotherapy bioethics

Physiotherapy has been widely defined as a healthcare profession that assesses, diagnoses, treats, and works to prevent disease and disability through physical means. The World Confederation for Physical Therapy describes physiotherapy as providing services to people and populations to develop, maintain, and restore maximum movement and functional ability throughout the lifespan. Physiotherapists working with terminally ill patients face a myriad of ethical issues which have not been substantially discussed in bioethics especially in the African perspective...

Ethics is a core component of healthcare curricula and may provide ideal content for interprofessional education (IPE). An IPE debate in ethics and professionalism was developed for first year undergraduate pharmacy and physiotherapy students. A controlled "before-and-after" study was conducted. The opinion of students on IPE, the debate topics and debating was determined before and after the debate. While there was no impact on attitudes to IPE or healthcare professionals, students agreed that debating ethics through IPE was a valid teaching modality...

In this paper, the authors outline the rationale, planning, delivery, results, evaluation and knowledge transfer strategies employed in offering an eight-hour education day offered 12 times in 2010, to a total of 200 staff in three Toronto General Hospital (TGH) intensive care units (ICU) at the University Health Network (UHN). The integration of members from the point-of-care staff teams into the planning, development, presentation and attendance was a critical success factor for this initiative. Organizers and participants had the opportunity to build bridges with each other and across teams and programs by engaging in interprofessional learning, sharing narratives and consolidating increasing awareness of resources with facilitation from staff from nursing, medicine, palliative care, bioethics, social work, physiotherapy, respiratory therapy, wellness and spiritual care...

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OBJECTIVES: The aim of this project was to identify core topics of health care ethics that could be taught through an inter-professional approach to undergraduate education. DESIGN: Five nominal group technique workshops. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Teaching staff from different professional disciplines in our university (nursing branches, occupational therapy and physiotherapy). RESULTS: Seven core topics of health care ethics that are common across all disciplines were identified...