Hello!

[RodrigoRocha]

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Hello dear colleagues,

after spending some time relaxing on the internet, I have found this nice Forum. Brazilian from Rio de Janeiro, I am a DPT with a MSc in Anatomy and Cell Biology. I am an Osteopathic/Manual Therapy practitioner, so in US terms a specialist in orthopedics. Currently I am involved in my PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and I am still consulting in my private practice since my graduation in 1999.

I know that the reality (socioeconomically) between Brazil and North America is huge. Nevertheless impairments and diseases are similar, so I will try to be useful in any ways that I can.

I am sorry for any languages mistakes, here we speak Portuguese!😀

Cheers

 

[hankea4]

Your professional interests are a unique mix -- physical therapy and public health/research methods. I am pursuing my Masters of Public Health right now, and am strongly considering physical therapy afterwards. While I enjoy the research component, I want to work directly in patient care as well.

May I ask what your PhD research focus is?

In the US at least, it seems that the physical therapy profession is undergoing major changes (as is the entire health care system). I would imagine that an increased focus on evidence-based and epidemiological studies in rehabilitation will be enormously important to legitimize the DPT degree and ensure PTs get their "cut" in future reimbursement plans/models.

 

[RodrigoRocha]

My thesis concerns the ability to make multiple diagnoses and manage them in a parallel form not hierarchically. The idea is to use biostatistics in qualitative and quantitative ways to increase the chances of successfully treat complex clinical presentations and to decrease de size of the samples in order to establish cause-effect relationships.

I think you are absolutely right. In my opinion it is fundamental to have DPTs with very different backgrounds. We need more epidemiologists, more philosophers and more mathematicians in our field to establish our leadership in movement dysfunction and rehabilitation care.

I believe that most discussions around stupid (in my point of view) issues like scopes of practice and DPTs vs Physicians etc. are the consequences of a complete lack of a specific language that can translate what we DPTs do as healthcare providers. Our processes of diagnotics, hypotheses testing, treatment planning and preventing is very different from the medical one. I guess we are facing what physicists observed by the discovery of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg in his biography has written about the linguistic obstacles of saying what he was viewing and for this reason Einstein died without accepting the whole idea: "God does not play dice" That is why I got so interested in philosophy, biostatistics and epidemiology.

Do not hesitate! Once Master of Public Health, head for your DPT. The future will prove you were right.

Cheers

 

[markelmarcel]

Welcome!

 

[vapt]

^^Ditto! Welcome aboard, and I look forward to more posts from you. Very refreshing/all-encompassing take on our field.

 

[hipnotic88]

welcome