In the pantheon of famous physiotherapists can you name a single French one? It is unlikely. Despite the profession in France being over 170 years old, having more than 100,000 practitioners and their government so valuing their service that it provides the funding for its citizens, France’s contribution to the global physiotherapy profession is almost non-existent.
French physiotherapist Pierre Trudelle believes that the profession’s sheer mass, assured place and guaranteed income has produced complacency, and as a result there is little interest in research, professional development and critical thinking. He offers as evidence the fact that the largest and most powerful physiotherapy organisation in the country is the union that negotiates fees with the government. In contrast, the professional associations are poorly supported and with no significant journal or conference activity there is little research and little interest in progressing the profession.
In his ten year government role to help create clinical guidelines in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, Pierre read widely, connected with global peers and attended international conferences. He was shocked and excited by the volume of, and enthusiasm toward, research and education occurring outside of France and has committed his career to exposing French Physiotherapy to the wider world and bringing world physiotherapy to France.
Pierre’s first step was to become editor of the French physiotherapy journal ‘Kinésithérapie, la revue’ to share what he had learnt whilst developing the clinical guidelines. In 2007 Pierre instigated a French Congress, which attracted 350 participants. Pleasingly interest is growing with every reiteration and last year there were over 2000 attendees.
Pierre believes that also contributing to French physiotherapy’s insularism is their unique title ‘Masseur-Kinésithérapeute’ – a byproduct of discomfort with the French translation of the original Swedish ‘Sjukgymnastik’ (sick – exercise) and the need for differentiation from non-trained competitors at the time. Pierre strongly believes the profession would benefit from moving to the more global title ‘physiothérapie’ and in 2009 successfully lobbied the national association Société Française de Kinésithérapie to change their name to the Société Française de Physiothérapie.
To reach more French and francophone physiotherapists Pierre recognised the power of the Internet. His first product was a website physiotherapy directory in 1997 and in 2007 a site for abstracts of scientific articles. With this year’s Covid-19 lockdown Pierre has found the time to create a new website to facilitate French physiotherapy critical thinking and discussion.
To simultaneously achieve all of his revolutionary objectives Pierre chose the incredibly powerful domain name www.think.physio for the website.
The domain is short, punchy and being in English challenges his colleagues to think beyond their national borders, and most importantly asks readers to “think” about how they practice physiotherapy.
Like all revolutionaries Pierre has received significant push-back from those who are comfortable with the status quo or fearful of change. For us, as a global advocate with the profession’s own digital namespace Dot Physio Pty Ltd welcomes Pierre’s efforts and are delighted to be helping him bring about his very own French revolution.
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