Your study found that compassionate care was the most emphasised ethical principle. How do physiotherapists balance emotional engagement with maintaining professional boundaries, particularly in palliative care settings? 

As a physiotherapist, you may from time to time find yourself being asked to provide advice or treatment to family or friends.

What are the risks of doing so?

And yet talk about it we must in light of the changes in the insurance landscape over the past few years.

Global instability and the fast-paced world of commerce are contributing to unprecedented volatility in the insurance market.

Geopolitical uncertainty brought about by wars and energy crises, alongside factors such as climate change and increasingly common natural disasters, has an arguably larger impact on this market than on any other.

Historically, the scope of practice of physiotherapy and other health professions in Australia was clearly defined and documented.

Physiotherapists play an important role in the healthcare workforce across Australia and, as demand for care increases, health services have been encouraging practitioners to return to practice.

As a physiotherapist, you are required to touch, apply pressure to and manipulate patients, which involves close physical contact.

It is therefore crucial that you understand and work within the parameters of safe, clinical and appropriate touching.

Usually this has been an attempt to reduce cost by ‘testing’ the physiotherapy profession.

Would we be strong enough to resist, to fight for our right to our National Laws’ definition of scope of practice, and continue to deliver contemporary care to our patients?

Being a treating physiotherapist puts a practitioner in close contact with a patient.
 

This means that understanding your obligations regarding professional boundaries is pivotal.