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assistance is immediately given to the power of speech for one process influences
the other. Speech Therapists must know our aims and we must know
theirs in turn. It is always sensations that are being learnt by the patient,
not movements as we all tend to imagine.
The aim must be to achieve an integrated approach to treatment and to
provide a supplement to the work of our colleagues. Emphasis must be laid
on two factors involved with motor learning. Firstly, that motor learning
follows inherent developmental sequences and secondly, that it is influenced
by the control of sensory stimulation. All of the work of physiotherapists,
speech and occupational therapists is involved in this knowledge.
7. Summary
All ancillary professions are aware of the paradox of medical progress
in which established medical problems are eradicated only to be replaced by
new ones. Likewise in physiotherapy, some established patterns of treatment
(like artificial stimulation of muscles by means of electricity) disappear, and
others are by force of necessity, developed. There is a natural reluctance to
admit this change and there is marked hesitancy by us to move forwards.
Vast strides have been made in therapeutics and surgery with the result that
physiotherapy has been made dispensable; we fail to enjoy these advances
however, and there is almost apprehension amongst us that this state of
affairs does exist. Neurophysiologists have made a great laboratory of knowledge
available to us and with this synthesis of procedures we are advantageously
placed for further professional development.
Physiotherapists must discover the rationale for everything they do, then
they will not be technicians but skilled and resourceful therapists.