MANUAL COMING SOON

An instruction manual on physiotherapy that would educate physicians on exactly when they should recommend a patient to go
see a physiotherapist, will soon be a reality.

This is coming from President of the Barbados Physical Therapy Association, Dr. Nicola Yard, who spoke with The Barbados Advocate on Saturday night after that association’s Awards Dinner at the Accra Beach Hotel and Spa.

She said that the book is now in the proposal stages and it will also educate the general public on what exactly their profession entails because in this day and age, nobody should be asking them what it is that they do.

“Well, not only thinking in terms of the profession, but obviously also continuing education. I am not only thinking in terms of being a part of a sports team or writing journals or stuff, but in terms of making changes. Right now we are trying to put forward a proposal that actually has an instruction course for physiotherapy for doctors, so that when their (patients) come out they (doctors) know when to recommend them for physiotherapy. So things along those lines; things in terms of like you know, giving back and just being more visible so that people then know what physiotherapy is because in 2017, nobody should ask me what is a physiotherapist. Nobody asks a doctor or nurse what their job is, nobody asks a policeman what their job is or a lawyer, so why don’t people know what a physiotherapist is?”

Another area that the book will serve to educate the public on is that not everybody who offers massages is trained in physiotherapy.

“I think that if we all come together, move forward and continue to educate persons. We have found that there are people who are coming in and doing things and saying that they are physiotherapists who are not really physio-therapists, so we are trying to stamp that out, trying to let people know what physiotherapy is and to let them know that not everyone who massages is a physiotherapist, not everyone who works with a sports team is a physiother-apist. So those are the sort of things that we are trying to do, trying to educate the public and once everybody plays their role, we are hoping that would make the changes that we need,” said Yard.

In the meantime, she will be working on getting the profession to be more visible in the island.

“So that is why we need to get to the point where we are so visible that people know who we are, if they did not know... So that is basically what I want to do in that regard. Of course, I still want us to be physiotherapists that are known for great work and so forth, but I want us to be more visible, so that people know what physiotherapy is. That is my main thing.”