Why in the World?

Is there a place for a global physiotherapy organisation in the 21 century? And if yes what should it do? Does it inform or provide value for our profession, and if so, how can we measure or report that impact? How do we create a sustainable model, and how do we evolve to meet the changing needs of our stakeholders? In 1951, when the World Confederation for Physical Therapy (WCPT), the global physiotherapy organisation, was founded by 11 national professional organisations the answers were probably clearer. Discussions held in 1948, at the annual Congress of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, by representatives of 13 countries led to a decision that there was a need for an international professional organisation to give guidance to the profession, to the United Nations and its specialised agencies and to international voluntary organisations sponsoring rehabilitation programmes (WCPT, 2001) Representatives attending the establishment meeting in Copenhagen on 8 September 1951 discussed ‘the merits of the organisation which would help physiotherapists promote the interchange of professional and scientific knowledge, make better and closer links between countries and within the profession itself, and provide on an international scale many of the services that professional associations offered at a national level. The annual subscription was set at £8’ (WCPT, 2001). Today, WCPT is made up of 112 member organisations. It is a diverse organisation, with membership of its member organisations ranging from 13 physiotherapists to circa 70,000 physiotherapists. The number of physiotherapists to 100,000 of the population varies significantly across the world ranging from 0.2 per 100,000 in Malawi (WCPT, 2016) to 246 per 100,000 in Finland (EuroStat, 2015). The proportion of physiotherapists in countries who are members of their WCPT member organisation also varies from a low of 0.4% to a high of 90%. To answer some of the questions posed above, just recently, WCPT completed an unprecedented consultation on its strategic activities for the coming years, engaging over 3700 responses in a series of polls and surveys translated into five languages. As a result, we have a plan that is ambitious, exciting and transformative. In the course of the consultation, we asked respondents to tell us the top opportunities for the profession; the top five were direct access and patient self-referral, the growing body of research in support of physiotherapy, our role in ageing populations and in primary or community care and collaborative practice. The top five challenges reported were pay and working conditions, lack of professional esteem for physiotherapy, lack of professional autonomy, the need to improve understanding about the value of physical therapy and encroachment on the role of physiotherapists by others. Consulting with our own global community as well as other external stakeholders such as international professional organisations, we developed our strategic plan and our outcomes are as follows: