Art Explanation: This is Maurits Cornelis Escher’s lithograph of hands drawing each other, it was first printed in 1948

Link to clinical practice

My interpretation of this lithograph is based on philosophical term known as ontological design, which means when you design or create an impact on something, that something that is being impacted by you also produce an impact on you, which produces a feedback loop effect. As practical example,I had a patient in my neuromusculoskeletal block where I was very unsure about whether my treatment intervention can really alleviate his symptoms. And when you are very uncertain your confidence tends to crash down spectacularly(Reference), but still I went ahead with my treatment. The patient started to report improvement in his symptoms mid through treatment session, such feedback really uplifted me my spirit and confidence and enhanced my knowledge. In essence I made a patient feel better, and that in turn made me feel better.

In a broader perspective this concept is very important especially in a Physiotherapy profession as a whole. Firstly, because our profession’s treatment and assessment interventions do not have a well backed objective research background as a form of evidence(Maitland, 2015), which makes our Evidence Based approach not entirely objective, As the basis of our many research based interventions start from Case studies research then into Randomized control trial studies (Sousa et al, 2012). This proves that the most important step in our scope of practice is interaction with the patient, as this interaction does not only allow us to test and assess whether certain interventions work, but allow us to build a strong foundational evidence that in which our profession stems from. Unlike in other professions like Medicine where the most interventions they use are based on research conducted on either animals or cadavers. However, it has to be said that we also have well researched assessment and treatment interventions like strengthening exercises in aiding patient to regain their muscle strength. And there is interventions like electrotherapy, that doesn’t have much research backing yet some patients still report improvement after using it (Maitland, 2015), and which is probably the reason we still use it today.

The idea is that the existence of physiotherapy is solely based on patients, without them there is no physiotherapy. The same can be said for the patients, for them to access non-invasive quality treatment or harness the full capability of their bodies to full recovery after injuries and restore functional efficiency they need us. So, with our interventions we improve and help patients to recover and be relieved from their problems, at a same time the feedback we receive from patients after our interventions helps us to establish a firm ground on the significance of our profession. So this relationship is perfectly summed up the Lithograph on below.

Reference List

Maitland, M  2015 No evidence ? No problem university of washington ; rehabilitation medicine vol 1(3) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physio.2015.03.1780

Sousa, J., Cabri, J., & Donaghy, M. (2007). Case research in sports physiotherapy: A review of studies. Physical Therapy In Sport, 8(4), 197-206. doi: 10.1016/j.ptsp.2007.02.003