Moving towards Therapists Becoming Better Educators: A Commentary on Changes in the Content of Pediatric Physical Therapy for Infants: A Quantitative, Observational Study

Abstract

Patients and their families have expressed that they want information (Hendricks, 2000) and as a result often turn to Google for health and medical information. Society as a whole is more informed than ever and no longer rely only on medical practitioners as in previous generations. Instead, and rightly so, they question medical experts and want to know the reasoning and rationale behind everything they experience. This combined with the shift towards family-centred principles over the last 20 years underscores the need to provide comprehensive and effective education to families. But what should that look like? Improving parental competence through education promotes their beliefs that they can be positive agents of change in their child’s life (Guimond et al., 2008). Similarly, therapists are slowly starting to concede that parents have the greatest amount of time and influence over their children’s development (Mahoney and Perales, 2006), and as a result, are the primary agents of change.

Keywords:

• Gross motor development
• caregiver education
• pediatric physiotherapy
• instructional models

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the Author

Debra Teitelbaum is a physiotherapist with 28 years of experience in neuro-developmental pediatrics. She involves parents directly in therapy by teaching them to respond and support their child's gross motor development. She is currently working at The Alberta Children's hospital.