Environmental Physiotherapy: A New Lens for Patient Care

So I think my first question for you, and this is what I had when I was looking, was how is this different from just making your clinic more sustainable?

Yeah, I think it's very different, but I would say that it also includes that, right? Like it can encompass that and naturally it will and does.

But ultimately for me, you know, environmental physiotherapy for me is like in somewhat short terms is something like an entirely new lens through which to look at physiotherapy and think through physiotherapy and all of its aspects.

And sorry, I'm just realizing I'm speaking to a US audience and saying physiotherapy.

I clearly mean physical therapy.

We understand that.

It's interchangeable for us.

Okay, good.

Yeah, okay.

So I'm probably going to kind of end up saying physiotherapy mostly.

But, yeah, so it's essentially, you know, for me, kind of like a new lens, a new way to think through everything we do and kind of everything we think in physiotherapy, every single kind of specialization that we have.

And as a new lens, it also kind of like it has something to say about or it has something to contribute in terms of changing what we do both in very small ways and kind of like essentially sort of like continuing more or less a business as usual but a little bit better which would be sort of like making your clinic a bit more greener a bit greener but but continuing to do the same work but it also i think has much more fundamental implications which we're kind of still working on exploring in terms of really sort of like changing of what we think is physiotherapy and then what does that mean for how its practice should look and how could it would it be fundamentally different I have one other way that I sometimes also put kind of the answer to this question of what is environmental physiotherapy.

And it's essentially that for me, you know, for me, it started from a question.

And so what environmental physiotherapy is, is an engagement with the question of what does the environment have to do with physiotherapy? All in any aspect of physiotherapy, right? But if you study that question for a while, then you realize that the environment like is...

not necessarily always just ecological it's also social and you know there's all kinds of different sort of like understandings of what is the environment and so really the the question expands a little bit and it it becomes more of a question of what do health environment and society have to do with each other and how does that play out in all aspects of physiotherapy you know in terms of how does it affect all aspects of physiotherapy and what could it mean in terms of what physiotherapy would do differently as a result right so for me environmental physiotherapy in other words also an engagement with exactly that kind of really broad question right so

yeah yeah That's a great answer.

Emma, what does it mean to you? Or do you have anything else to add to that?

Yeah, I totally agree with Philip.

I would like to say it's a very wild field.

And I think it's worth saying at the start.

And we also, we enter this kind of field from different doors.

And even Philip and I has entered it from different doors.

And that's totally okay to do that.

And regarding the sustainable clinic, I think, as Philip said, that's only one part of environmental physiotherapy, but it is about the practice own footprint and it's, it's totally worth it, but that's more about, you know, recycling energy waste, people getting to work, but environmental physiotherapy goes to a deeper layer.

It's all about this connection between the patient yourself and the environment.