Prof David Nicholls PhD, MA, GradDip, MPNZ, SFHEA

Dave Nicholls is a Professor of Critical Physiotherapy in the School of Clinical Sciences at AUT University in Auckland, New Zealand.  He is a physiotherapist, lecturer, researcher and writer, with a passion for critical thinking in and around the physical therapies.  Dave is the founder of the Critical Physiotherapy Network (CPN), an organisation that promotes the use of cultural studies, education, history, philosophy, sociology, and a range of other disciplines in the study of the profession’s past, present and future.  He is also co-founder of the International Physiotherapy History Association (IPHA) Executive, and founding Executive member of the Environmental Physiotherapy Association (EPA). David’s own research work focuses on the philosophy, sociology, and critical history of physiotherapy, and considers how physiotherapy might need to adapt to the changing economy of health care in the 21st century.  He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, many as first author.  His first book – The End of Physiotherapy (Routledge, 2017) – was the first book-length critical history of the profession. A second sole-authored book – Physiotherapy Otherwise – was published in early 2022 as a free pdf/eBook (available from https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/tuwhera-open-monographs/catalog/book/8). He was co-editor on the first collection of critical physiotherapy writings – Manipulating Practices (Cappelen Damm, 2018) – and was the lead editor for the follow-up – Mobilising Knowledge (Routledge, 2020). He is also very active on social media, writing weekly on contemporary critical physiotherapy issues. In early 2023 he established a new site specialising in post-critical healthcare (paradoxa.substack.com). He has taught in physiotherapy programmes in the UK and New Zealand for over 30 years and has presented his work around the world. 

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Title: The end of the professions: What will the post-professional era mean for osteopathy?

Abstract: All of the professions are entering a post-professional era in which they will play are much more marginal role in the organisation off health care than they have done in the past. The health professions have been saved from the kinds of disruption that has affected areas like banking, journalism, manufacturing, public administration, travel and tourism, but change is certainly coming, and the turn in recent decades towards consumer healthcare, the atomisation of the body, and global digital disruption, all point to the fact that we are entering perhaps the most turbulent time in the history of the healthcare professions. 

Central to the disruption to come will be a dramatic shift in the role that established professions like osteopathy play in the future of healthcare. Governments and publics around the world are looking to the health professions to point the way, but osteopathy, like many Western healthcare professions, is only now waking up to the need for it to think beyond the body-as-machine. And never before has a working knowledge of sociology and philosophy been more important, because osteopathy faces a difficult existential question: does it want to remain the same and risk being marginalised in a post-professional world, or does it want to remain relevant but potentially lose the identity and prestige it has worked so hard to obtain? In this talk, I will explain what post-professionalism means, why it’s a real and pressing issue, what health professions like osteopathy are already doing about it, why most of these responses are ill-advised, and suggest some radical alternatives.