Happy New Year. I hope that 2024 will be a healthy, fulfilling, safe and fun year, after three very difficult ones, and that everyone has had the opportunity to rest, to reconnect with loved ones and to gear up again.

ADVOCACY It’s been a taboo topic for far too long but the time is right to address physical birth trauma, argues the APA’s Policy and Government Relations team.

The APA recently launched its ‘Valuing Skills’ initiative.

As the year comes to an end, we reflect, as always, on what we have and have not achieved and look for the opportunities that may well be on the horizon in 2024.

PRIMARY CARE The success of a primary contact physiotherapy service established in a Geelong Urgent Care Clinic suggests an effective approach for the future, explain physiotherapists Mark Napper and Emily Bradshaw.

The APA has updated its member code of conduct. APA National President Scott Willis APAM and APA CEO Anja Nikolic outline what you need to know and urge all members to familiarise themselves with the new code.

Governments are forever undertaking ‘health reforms’ by initiating measures—sometimes incrementally, other times rapidly—to improve our vast, complex and geographically challenging health system. To make this task harder, we have three layers of government and multiple jurisdictions responsible for ‘reform’.

ADVOCACY APA member Daniel Hiep is an Australian physiotherapist who practised as a first contact practitioner in the UK. As we continue to explore overseas models of first contact physiotherapy, Daniel shares his experiences with the APA Policy and Government Relations team.

High value care is a concept bandied around by researchers, policy wonks and bureaucrats but it’s also something that all physiotherapists can strive to provide to their patients.

It’s easy to overlook the power of an individual voice or underestimate the effect of people reaching out to their members of parliament.