The End of Physiotherapy

Physiotherapy is arriving at a critical point in its history. Since World War I, physiotherapy has been one of the largest allied health professions and the established provider of orthodox physical rehabilitation. But ageing populations of increasingly chronically ill people, a growing scepticism towards biomedicine and the changing economy of healthcare threaten physiotherapy''s long-held status. Paradoxically, physiotherapy''s affinity for treating the ''body-as-machine'' has resulted in an almost complete inability to identify the roots of the profession''s present problems, or define possible ways forward. Physiotherapists need to engage in critically informed theoretical discussion about the profession''s past, present and future - to explore their practice from economic, philosophical, political and sociological perspectives.

The End of Physiotherapy aims to explain how physiotherapy has arrived at this critical point in its history, and to point to a