Physiotherapy is arriving at a critical point in its history. Since World War I physiotherapy has been one of the largest allied health professions and the established provider of orthodox physical rehabilitation. But ageing populations of increasingly chronically ill people a growing scepticism towards biomedicine and the changing economy of healthcare threaten physiotherapyâs long-held status. Paradoxically physiotherapyâs affinity for treating the âbody-as-machineâ has resulted in an almost complete inability to identify the roots of the professionâs present problems or define possible ways forward. Physiotherapists need to engage in critically informed theoretical discussion about the professionâs past present and future - to explore their practice from economic philosophical political and sociological perspectives. The End of Physiotherapy aims to explain how physiotherapy has arrived at this critical point in its history and to point to a new future for the profession. The book draws on critical analyses of the historical and social conditions that have made present-day physiotherapy possible. Nicholls examines some of the key discourses that have had a positive impact on the profession in the past but now threaten to derail it. This book makes it possible for physiotherapists to think otherwise about their profession and their day-to-day practice. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of physiotherapy interprofessional and community rehabilitation as well as appealing to those working in medical sociology the medical humanities medical history and health care policy. . Language: English