Who should attend a WCPT congress?

Congress is relevant to any physical therapist, whether a student, clinician, manager, educator, researcher or policy-maker. With a range of session formats including focused symposia, discussion panels, networking sessions and free papers, there is something to appeal to everyone.

In the articles below, delegates describe their experiences at WCPT congresses and the impact they had on their careers.

• How a WCPT congress changed my professional life - Bill Romani
• WCPT congress: The experience of a lifetime! - Joan Walker
• What the last congress in Canada meant to me - Maria Suwalska

Tracy Bury also explores some grand ideas that could result from congress in her Physiotherapy journal editorial.

How a WCPT congress changed my professional life

Why are WCPT congresses important? By Bill Romani.

I went to the WCPT congress in Barcelona in 2003 to present an abstract of my work on the influence of steroid sex hormones and the remodelling of the anterior cruciate ligament in women. I was in the process of starting a clinic at the University of Maryland School of Medicine to serve homeless and medically indigent patients. I wanted to expand my experience, so that I could volunteer with underserved populations overseas and had very limited success finding anything on US web sites.

When I got to Barcelona, a symposium on physical therapy and torture caught my eye. Coming from the United States where there is very little overseas travel, it was a topic that was novel and I thought that it might provide some clues on how to get involved in overseas service. The symposium was very powerful. The stories of torture and the struggles to help torture survivors with physical therapy services told by clinicians in South Africa and Zimbabwe were quite moving. Hearing these first hand stories made the subject much closer and more personal.

The meeting in Barcelona was held about two months after the United States declared war on Iraq. As the discussion shifted to war as a cause of torture, the level of discomfort many felt with the war in Iraq became clear because of the hardship that it was likely to cause to Iraqi civilians. I slid down in my chair.

It took me about an hour to speak out: I said I thought there was a need for volunteers to provide physical therapy support, education, and services but I drew attention to my difficulty in finding a way to volunteer for this type of service overseas. I suggested there should be a central place where clinicians from around the world could find places to volunteer overseas. Certainly the wealthiest countries like the US, Canada, and the UK should have the resources to contribute to such efforts.

After the meeting I met with an educator from a physiotherapy school in Melbourne, Australia who brought her students to India for training, a physical therapist helping start a physical therapy education programme in Afghanistan, and one of the panelists. We agreed there and then to try to establish a central site for organisations needing physical therapy services, and physical therapists willing to volunteer.

When I got back to the US just about everyone I talked to said that if such a site existed they would consider volunteering overseas. I also discovered quite a few clinicians, organisations, and schools that were involved in overseas service.

Over the next year I tried to assemble a group to meet at the 2005 Combined Sections Meeting in New Orleans to discuss an international service clearing house web site. I was able to assemble a group with participants from Health Volunteers Overseas, the Cross Cultural and International Special Interest Group from the APTA Health Policy and Administration Section, and faculty members from the University of Florida.

Later that year we met with Brenda Myers, WCPT Secretary General, at the APTA National meeting in Boston. Since that time the WCPT has been very supportive of our efforts to generate a central web site where countries or organisations could define their needs for physical therapy services or consulting and where volunteers could find places to serve. Now we are hoping to use the 2007 WCPT meeting in Vancouver as a stage to discuss ways to get the word out about international service. We hope to hold a symposium and meetings on the subject.

For more information, contact WRomani@som.umaryland.edu

Reference: Romani W. How a WCPT Congress changed my professional life. WCPT News 2006 (March):7

WCPT congress: The Experience of a Lifetime!

By Joan Walker.

John Donne’s phrase from 1624, “No man is an island, entire of itself” can be applied to physiotherapy.

Attending and participating in the WCPT (World Confederation for Physical Therapy) congresses that takes place every four years in a variety of interesting international venues, gives the individual physical therapist a different and global perspective on their professional world. These congresses are an excellent opportunity for physical therapists to participate in both scientific and social programming, both of which highlight the differences and the similarities in physical therapy practice around the world. I encourage you to go. If you are a first-time attendee, you are sure to find yourself hooked and become a regular attendee for decades to come.

WCPT is the place to develop enriching professional relationships. Joan Walker joins a small group in discussion at the 1999 WCPT Congress in Yokohama, Japan, with (from left to right): Brenda Myers, WCPT Secretary General; Mei-Lang Chang, former president of the Physical Therapy Association of Taiwan; Pam Teager (wife of then president WCPT David Teager); Joan Walker, Canada’s Enid Graham Lecture Award winner; and Hua-Fang Liao, Associate Professor, Department of Physical Therapy at National Taiwan University - and former president of the Physical Therapy Association of Taiwan.

Being now somewhat mature, I have gone to WCPT congresses (whenever financially feasible) since 1963 when I went toCopenhagen, Denmark - although, I confess that I gate-crashed the event while on a hitch hiking tour of Europe. Since then I have been a more law abiding paid up attendee! Next was Montreal, Canada, in 1974 – although my memory of that year was acting as a doorkeeper to control room numbers or else the fire department was going to close us down. So many USA physical therapists rolled across the border to attend without having pre-registered, that serious space problems were created. Pre-register!

That Montreal meeting marked the beginning of many professional relationships – and a few that grew into real friendships, renewed every four years or so. For me, those relationships have provided the greatest value from WCPT congresses. With friends and colleagues scattered around the globe it is only at these events that I can get many together.

In 1991, a car accident three weeks prior to the congress in London, England did not deter me from attending, albeit in a wheelchair. With assistance from folks like Nancy McKay I got around, but well recall the strange routes and various freight elevators I had to use to get to lecture rooms for my three presentations. By 1991, WCPT congress had changed from cosy small events to one with 54 member organisations represented. Barcelona 2003 had 83 member organisations, and Vancouver in 2007 had 92 organisations represented.

The London congress also marked a welcome improvement in the scientific programming that has continued to be refined ever since.

While early congresses were attended more for their cultural diversity and social contacts, now an attendee has a rich and varied scientific programme from which to select. Pre- and post-congress courses, workshops, focused symposia, clinical visits, platform papers, posters, computer-based programs, the exhibit hall; probably more choice than one rightly desires!

WCPT congresses are opportunities waiting to happen: opportunities for discussing clinical practice with physical therapists from different countries; opportunities for seeing new countries; opportunities for meeting physical therapy researchers in your area; and, if you are extremely lucky as I have been, for meeting present and future leaders in the profession, and occasionally heads of state! The Queen of England opened the London Congress and in a wheelchair I stood out, so at a reception both she and Prince Phillip stopped to chat. I also had the opportunity to talk with the Health Minister, Virginia Bottomley, about the lack of access for people with disabilities, especially it seemed, in central London. Later, I also had the honour of being presented to the Empress of Japan, who with the Emperor opened the 14th congress in Yokohama. Having spent a week before the congress visiting their magnificent large gardens and temples, I had been struck by the lack of aids to give the physically challenged access to most places. As the Empress had recently had a mobility problem she was very aware and interested in this topic.

I would strongly recommend that when you go to a WCPT Congress, you also take the time to get an experience of everyday life in that country. An appreciation of the cultural diversity in our world is vital to both clinical practice and education. When educational programmes attract students from other countries for entry-level or graduate studies, it is vital that they return equipped to manage common problems in their own countries. North American practitioners do not often encounter leprosy, acute poliomyelitis, TB of the spine, amputations due to land mines or torture victims - WCPT exposes physical therapists to this variety and provides great exposure for both educators and therapists considering working abroad.

I look forward to connecting with colleagues and former students from many countries at the next WCPT Congress. Where else can such contacts be made and retained?

This article is reprinted and edited from Contact, with permission from the Canadian Physiotherapy Association(CPA) and author Joan M. Walker.

Reference: Walker JM. WCPT Congress: The Experience of a Lifetime! Contact 2006;11(6):1,4

What the last congress in Canada meant to me

By Maria Suwalska.

A physical therapist from Warsaw, Poland, I was a voting delegate at the WCPT General Meeting in Canada in June 1974. With the congress held again in Canada in 2007, the memories came flooding back.

It was my first journey across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first time I had participated in such an important event. The congress has remained in my memory since as a remarkable and inspiring experience.

I was able to attend due to the kind financial assistance of the American Physical Therapy Association. As President of the Polish Section of Physiotherapy, I had a year earlier established a programme of two professional visits for them in Poland, which included also meetings with Polish physiotherapists, discussions and exchange of ideas on education and research. As a result of this, I was invited by APTA to a pre-congress meeting on “Physical therapy licensure and certification in other countries” organised at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal on 16 June 1974. I presented the Polish system of education of physiotherapists, and found the meeting an extremely interesting forum for the exchange of views between such distant continents. Our problems proved to be similar, which brought all the participants much closer. We realised that there was a global significance to ensuring physiotherapists had the best possible education and professional qualifications.

The congress scientific sessions and the 8th WCPT General Meeting also took place in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. As a voting delegate at the General Meeting, I felt very stressed. Because of currency problems faced by Poland in the 1970s, the Polish Section of Physiotherapy was then behind with member fee payments for 1973 and 1974, which resulted in lowering its status to provisional membership in WCPT. That meant it was not possible to actively participate in the General Meeting. But my stress eased as, to my great satisfaction, after a number of talks with the WCPT President Doreen Moore and the Secretary General Elizabeth McKay, the General Meeting restored full membership to the Polish Section of Physiotherapy.

Of the 37 WCPT member organisations at the time, 33 participated in the Montreal General Meeting. Bearing in mind that this number has now increased to 92, this provides an indication of how physical therapy has become the dominant therapeutic medium internationally.

I still remember the motto of the 7th Congress: “Expanding Horizons of Physical Therapy”. It was remarkable not just for its international atmosphere and social events, such as gala dinner at the bank of the St Lawrence River, but for the quality of the speeches.

It was a memorable day for my professional career when I heard Doreen Moore say at the opening ceremony: “…the theme chosen for the congress should act as a challenge to each of us so that we may consider our profession today and project it into the future keeping in mind the constant change all around us…”.

This statement is still relevant. Look at the motto of the 15th congress, also held in Canada three decades later and with the world having undergone enormous change: “Moving Physical Therapy Forward”. At the Montreal congress, 92 papers were presented. Many revealed new trends and a growing interest in neurophysiology and electro-diagnosis. Just five papers addressed such areas as clinical education and methodology for research work.

Most papers were on the role of physiotherapy in the rehabilitation of the persons with locomotory system impairments, whereas only three papers focused on the applications of physiotherapy in cancer and cardiovascular diseases, which are such important areas now, with physiotherapists playing a key role in the implementation of the WHO programme on stroke, for example.

Since Montreal, WCPT has tremendously increased its range of activities and developed its own guidelines and recommendations. It has become absolutely clear that physiotherapy is essential and indispensable.

As one of Poland’s outstanding scholars Professor Wiktor Dega said at the 1st National Congress of Physiotherapy in Pozna, Poland in 1962: “….Movement is a medication. It has neither substance, nor packaging. Its substance springs out of an idea born from science and experience. Its application requires true mastery. Its handing over to the patient by the physiotherapist with sensitive personality and heart makes it an irreplaceable remedy…”

I believe that every physiotherapist is now aware of the truth that our profession is unique and undergoes rapid changes.

My memories of my trip to the 7th WCPT congress in Canada will remain with me for ever. The high standard and prestige currently enjoyed by physiotherapy makes me really very proud.

Reference: Suwalska M. What the last Congress in Canada meant to me. WCPT News 2007 (January):4

Did a WCPT Congress change your professional life?

If you had experiences at a WCPT congress in the past that has set you on a new course professionally, please let us know. Send details to: Simon Crompton, Editor, WCPT News at news@wcpt.org