This initiative features materials such as factsheets and infographics to help various audiences—funders, policymakers and the public—differentiate between physiotherapists and other professions. 

These materials articulate in objective, factual terms the difference in training, skills and scope that a physiotherapist brings to the table.

Differentiating between a physiotherapist and an exercise physiologist is not a new issue. 

What is new is that funders and policymakers are openly telling us they’re confused, and are asking for help. 

We know that the confusion is already leading to suboptimal policy and funding decisions.

Recently the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA), the compensable body in New South Wales, made a seemingly innocuous but actually profound change to its low back pain model of care. 

It replaced the word ‘physiotherapist’ with ‘physical therapies’ in reference to low back pain treatment pathways and the professionals involved in them.

The removal of reference to ‘physiotherapist’ (a protected title) to an agnostic one that could in theory encompass any number of professions and vocations represents a departure from evidence-based practice and a patient-first approach. 

It makes it possible for acute low back pain to be treated by those without the training, skills or scope to do this safely and well.

It is a bureaucratic decision made without a full understanding of the impact that this small change in wording can have to the outlook and success of a patient’s health journey. 

The APA vehemently continues to protest this change and will always advocate for evidence- based approaches that put the patient front-and-centre in the decision-making process.

In a health system increasingly pressed for money and available skills, one can only assume that this is the tip of the iceberg. 

Typically, what happens in one compensable scheme is soon replicated by others and so health system funding starts to be concerned with cost, not value, with ‘good enough’ rather than best practice.

We have long resisted drawing direct comparisons between professions. 

We know that the burden of ill health is such that there is room enough for every profession to contribute. 

The launch of the Valuing Skills project and its various resources is not intended to create a turf war. 

No one needs that, least of all our patients. 

But when there is a lack of understanding of skills and scope—at least in part driven by bold misrepresentations and disingenuous advocacy of other peak bodies—then setting the record straight in objective, factual terms becomes a necessity.

In addition, the Albanese Government has already begun its Unleashing the Potential of our Health Workforce—Scope of practice review as part of its response to the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce Report. 

I hope that this work leads to the optimisation of scopes of practice for all professions in order to meet the health needs of Australians and alleviate the workforce shortage. 

However, scope must always be appropriate and genuine to a professional’s training, skills and expertise. As a peak body and representative association, often advocating to the likes of GPs and surgeons, the APA has always honoured this principle.

We know that physiotherapists, exercise physiologists and many other professionals work cohesively side-by-side in practice, and the APA will always support a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach to health. 

This approach must be supported by a clear understanding of scopes of practice by funders and policymakers, and professionals and the associations that represent them.

>>Anja Nikolic APA Chief Executive Officer

To contact Anja, please email.