Physiotherapists, like all health professionals, use language to communicate what skills we possess and what we can offer potential patients.

We do this in different ways depending on who we are communicating with at any given time.

However, language is constantly evolving—a particular word may mean one thing to our parents and something quite different to our children—so we need to make careful choices in order to limit possible misinterpretation or confusion.

Language in advertising is no exception.

When advertising as physiotherapists, we want to convey a positive image and provide reasons as to why a person reading our promotional material would want to seek our services.

While the APA plays a major role in ‘selling’ the profession, it is up to each individual or group to sell their particular service.

As registered health professionals, we need to ensure that any advertising we use complies with Ahpra’s guidelines for advertising a regulated health service (Ahpra 2020).

The Ahpra guidelines contain explicit rules about the use of the title ‘specialist’ or the descriptor ‘specialise’ within advertising.

This has been discussed in a previous issue of InMotion (Cooper & Beales 2020).

Guidelines regarding the use of other adjectives or nouns, however, are not so clear-cut.

Rather than provide a list of acceptable or unacceptable terms, Ahpra lays out an overarching requirement:

If you are advertising a regulated health service, your advertising must not:

• be false, misleading or deceptive, or likely to be misleading or deceptive

In a highly competitive market, advertising enables us to underline points of difference between ourselves and other health practitioners.

We may do this in several ways, such as highlighting niche areas of practice, promoting our facilities or detailing the skills and abilities of the various practitioners employed within the business.

The National Professional Standards Panel of the APA has received notifications from members concerned that some of their colleagues are promoting themselves or their staff using terms that may be ‘misleading or deceptive, or likely to be misleading or deceptive’ when examined in context.

Particular words of concern include ‘expert’, ‘highly experienced’ and ‘world-class’.

As mentioned earlier, language is constantly evolving.

Not so long ago a legend was a mythical person who achieved great things.

Today, you might be considered a legend if you are sent for a round of drinks and you return with drinks and a bowl of chips.

As physiotherapists, we can’t change the course of linguistic evolution, but we can, and should, give careful consideration to the words we choose when advertising and have a defence to support them if challenged.

Use of the term ‘expert’ has been increasingly noted.

Some practices may indeed have experts within their employ, but are these the same physiotherapists that the APA would call upon to provide expert opinion in a legal case or in response to a media enquiry?

Within the APA’s Physiotherapy Career Pathway Competence Framework (APA 2017), an expert is a person who has reached the final milestone within their career pathway.

Physiotherapists operating at expert level, as defined within our career pathway framework, are practitioners who have achieved Fellowship of the Australian College of Physiotherapists.

Similarly, it may surprise members to learn that some of their colleagues who graduated only a few years ago are advertised as being ‘highly experienced’.

The APA does have many experts and highly experienced physiotherapists among its membership and a number who can truly lay claim to being world-class, but when we use ‘pointy end’ adverbs and adjectives indiscriminately, we not only risk breaching Ahpra’s guidelines, but also diminish the skills and abilities of physiotherapists who can justify the use of those terms.

The National Professional Standards Panel fully acknowledges that many commonplace descriptors used in advertising lack objective definitions, thus granting their application impunity.

However, physiotherapists should still ask themselves whether their chosen words could be ‘false, misleading or deceptive’.

How, then, do you know what terms should or should not be used?

Consider the APA Code of Conduct (APA 2017) and our professional standing within the community and ask yourself:

Does my advertising build trust?

Can I be accountable for it?

It’s a difficult path to tread when striving for meaningful self-promotion without artificial embellishment, but Ahpra and the APA want physiotherapists to be truthful.

If you have postgraduate qualifications in a certain area, then say that.

If you have been qualified and active in the profession for 20 years, then say that too.

These are statements that can be supported.

While it is tempting to nudge the boundary to gain that competitive edge, be mindful that you may not only be held to account by Ahpra.

By being even slightly deceptive, you may be undermining the integrity of the physiotherapy profession as a whole.

The National Professional Standards Panel consists of Ian Cooper (chair), Alison Smith, Dianna Howell, Susan Coulson, Khanh Tran and Tom Hindhaugh.

References

1 www.ahpra.gov.au/Publications/Advertising-hub/Advertising-guidelines-and...

2 InMotion October 2020 https://australian.physio/inmotion

3 https://australian.physio/sites/default/files/ABOUT-US/Governance/APA_Co...

4 https://australian.physio/sites/default/files/professional-development/d...