New Zealand Rehabilitation Association, Inc.

Having reviewed over the last year a number of web-based discussion boards that have been either deserted or populated mainly by spam, it’s nice to finally find one or two to write positively about.  This one is a forum for discussion of physiotherapy - or "physical therapy" as they call it in the US.

The PhysioForum is moderated (meaning that contributions unrelated to the discussion board – adverts for V*i*a*g*r*a for instance – get deleted) and has many new contributions posted daily. This forum is run by ‘PhysioBob’ who’s primary line of work is international job placement for physiotherapists, but this forum appears to be driven by a genuine intent to contribution to the physiotherapy online community, and it sits alongside PhysioBob’s business agenda well.  (The ‘PhysioBob’ website also has a well maintained list of physiotherapy related courses from around the globe and online shop for physiotherapy-related products.)

The PhysioForum is divided into a number of different areas, some related to clinical work – grouped by speciality topics – others related to physiotherapy news from around the world and to the sharing of information about looking for work in other countries.  A recent addition has been a discussion thread for the general public to ask any questions they might have about physiotherapy management of various conditions.  Another particularly novel aspect of the website is a ‘Video’ thread, where you can download and watch video footage of specific physiotherapy techniques being performed by the pros or (for the less squeamish among us) surgical procedures.

It can be a little difficult finding specific information on this website, but items are ‘tagged’ by topic, and a ‘tag cloud’ is available - click the link labelled ‘tags’ on the right-hand side of the top header. (A ‘tag cloud’ is a list of popular search terms, with font size proportional to the number of links related to each term – i.e. a larger font size indicates more links to that search term.) I noted with interest that the tag ‘ New Zealand’ was among the most popular links in the tag cloud – with most these links relating to threads about how to get a job here!