Abstract
Maintaining and enhancing professional autonomy requires continuous development of one’s professional and ethical competences in order to meet society’s mutable expectations to physiotherapy practice. As physiotherapy is a relational practice based on professional bodily analysis and touch it seems relevant to explore whether and how ethical issues arise during the first physiotherapy session. It is increasingly popular to choose a carrier in private practice, why understandings from physiotherapists within this context frame the study. Through a qualitative approach it is shown that ethical issues do occur within the first session and that the first session and the clinical context in private practice are essential from an ethical perspective. The consciousness about ethical issues differs in Danish physiotherapy private practice, and reflections and acts are vaguely based on ethical theories, principles and ethical guidelines. Beneficence towards the patient is seen as a fundamental aspect of the physiotherapists’ understanding of the first session. However, if the physiotherapist lacks a deeper ethical awareness, the physiotherapist may reason and/or act ethically to a varying extent: only an ethically conscious physiotherapist will know when he or she reflects and acts ethically. Further exploration of ethical issues in private practice is recommendable, and as management policy is deeply embedded within the Danish public sector there are reasons to explore public contexts of physiotherapy as well.
Highlights
Physiotherapy is a relational practice where the physiotherapist and the patient meet
Since 1970 several studies on ethical issues related to aspects of physiotherapy have been published [2,3,4,5,6,7]
These studies revealed a practice with a growing professional consciousness towards its unique ethical issues in the physiotherapist-patient relationship
Summary
Physiotherapy is a relational practice where the physiotherapist and the patient meet. Every meeting implies both written laws and guidelines that regulate professional practice, unwritten codes of conduct and power asymmetry, all conditions the physiotherapist has to handle. Even carefully planned meetings are never given how they shall go; some aspects of the meetings are given and some are constructed between physiotherapist and patient [1]. Practicing physiotherapy is characterized by a close and often continued relationship between physiotherapist and patient where both are being touched by one another physically and mentally [2,3]
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