Global Physio Podcast

In this episode, we speak with Lindsay Beavers and Codie Primeau on gender-affirming care in physiotherapy, who are faculty members and also members of the Queer Physiotherapy Collective. We discuss the existing gaps when providing care for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and ways clinicians can better support gender diverse populations. Resources and links: https://www.instagram.com/chest_binding_suppor...

Welcome to a new series on the podcast, named the FutureSeries. It will be a space where we chat with physios, and others, about our uncertainties, our fears, and most importantly, our hopes in a more just and healthy world. We envision these conversations to have “less answers”, but more imagination and creation, centered around these questions. What concerns and uncertainties in the world do you...

In this final Part 3, we speak with 2 guests. Amira Dirie is a registered psychotherapist, currently based on the East Coast of Canada. Sandra Ballantyne is a Canadian physiotherapist who has lived and worked in urban and remote areas of Canada, in Europe and in the Middle East. Early clinical experience in Lebanon and research in Palestine led her to graduate work in Community-Based Rehabilitatio...

In Part 2, we speak with Dr. Rachel Coghlan. She has over 20 years’ experience in public health, humanitarian response, and clinical physiotherapy practice, specialising in palliative care, neurology, oncology, and rehabilitation. She is a global leader on qualitative research and advocacy concerning palliative care in serious illness and injury in humanitarian settings, with a focus on armed conf...

In this Palestine Series, we sit down with three physiotherapists from Canada, the UK, and Australia, and a psychotherapist from Canada to explore their experiences with anti-Palestinian racism in healthcare systems. Together, we reflect on our personal and professional connections to Palestine, how the ongoing occupation across Palestine and ongoing genocide against Palestinians living in Gaza sh...

This episode we welcome back Steph Lurch to talk about her recent 30 day Health Justice Series, that has been taking place across several of her accounts. If you liked this conversation, head to  www.linkedin.com/in/slurch to check out the rest of the content. You can find out more about Steph Lurch here: Website: bio.site/stephlurch TikTok: medicine.needs.medicine Art Work as part of the Health J...

This episode, we are delighted to introduce our listeners to Zeina Abu-Jurji, our new co-host on the podcast. Zeina’s passion and commitment in advancing health justice was evident from the very first conversation we had, and we are excited to continue to bring more conversation about physiotherapy, rehabilitation and global health to this space. Read more about Zeina on our website, https:/...

Today’s guests are three second year physiotherapy students at the University of Manitoba: Emma De Guzman Caballero, Alana Lesperance and Gurkirat Gill. They talk about the literature review they conducted as part of their physiotherapy programme that focused on recommendations on how to provide environmentally-responsible community-based physiotherapy in Winnipeg. Bio: Alana Lesperance is a...

This episode, which was recorded in early 2024, features two physiotherapists, Adelaide Rusinga and Dr. Nathalia Costa, who share the learnings from their paper titled “Exploring the Systemic Structures that Affect Access to Physical Therapist Services for Non-Indigenous Black People in Australia.” Their research set out to explore the perspectives of non-Indigenous Black people when i...

Today’s guest is Ray Gates, an Aboriginal Australian (Bundjalung) physiotherapist with over 20 years experience as a PT and with Indigenous health. He was the first Aboriginal PT to become a member and later Chairperson of the Australian Physiotherapy Association’s (then) Indigenous Health Committee. He was a founder of the first Indigenous Physiotherapy Support Network in Australia, which later b...

Today’s guest is Stephanie Lurch, a storyteller, activist, leader and physiotherapist. A dynamic award-winning educator, Stephanie has worked across multiple settings in the healthcare and education sectors, bridging the gap between academia and practice. Her career has been distinguished by a wide breadth of clinical, teaching and real-life experiences including working with the Cirque du Soleil,...

In today’s episode, the co-hosts interview Hilary Crowley who is a physiotherapist and an author. Hilary published a travel memoir entitled “Mini Saga in South Africa” about a year that she spent working around South Africa in the 1960s. This was during apartheid which started in 1948 and continued until 1994. Her experiences there led her to follow a career in paediatrics and overseas development...

This episode, we are lucky to have Colleen, Margaret, Kirsten and Denise, who are all a part of the Community Rehab Program in Northern Ontario, Canada, share their experiences on the program. Community rehabilitation workers in this program are local Indigenous community members trained in providing rehabilitation to support Elders in their community. We talk about the Indigenous communities wher...

Today’s episode is Part 2 of a two-part series featuring Tracy Blake (she/her). The only daughter of Trinidadian immigrants, Tracy and her youngest brother were raised in the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith, working class neighbourhood of Rexdale in Toronto, on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Anishinabeg, Haudenosaunee, Chippewa, and Huron-Wendat peoples, a...

Today’s episode is Part 1 of a two-part series featuring Tracy Blake (she/her). The only daughter of Trinidadian immigrants, Tracy and her youngest brother were raised in the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith, working class neighbourhood of Rexdale in Toronto, on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Anishinabeg, Haudenosaunee, Chippewa, and Huron-Wendat peoples, a...

Today’s episode focuses on the fascinating career of Jennifer Allen, a Canadian-trained physiotherapist who is a former Chair of the Global Health Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. Jennifer has practiced and taught physiotherapy all over the world. Jennifer discusses her experience at World Physiotherapy Congress in Dubai in June 2023 and emerging roles for physiotherapists in th...

Today’s episode, we have Alex Heilmann, a Masters student at UBC, studying Community Planning. He is from Boston originally and moved to Vancouver to study Planning, particularly Transportation Planning. His work and projects relate to transitioning cities away from car dependency. We cover a range of topics on how urban planning and city design impacts health, not just physical health, but...

We, the podcast co-hosts, dedicated this episode to reflecting on how things have been going since the Global Physio Podcast relaunch in 2023. We express our gratitude for the many guests who have come onto the podcast. We discuss the successes as well as the challenges and lessons learned with the podcast. We talk about the ways we’ve changed as people and clinicians, and share some of the conten...

In this podcast episode, we speak with Bahareh Alexandra Hejazi about her experience and insights about her time spent in Italy, Palestine and Uganda. Despite international work offering many exciting prospects for health professionals and potential to create positive change across the globe, it is important to speak about the uncomfortable truths and complexities involved. Alex speaks candidly ab...

Sara Abassbhay completed her Bachelor of Sciences in Rehabilitation and her Master of Sciences (applied) in Physical Therapy at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her career has taken her all over the world and she has practiced as a physiotherapist in Singapore, Ghana, and Canada. More recently, she was working in the Yukon Territory in northern Canada and on a Mercy Ship near Sierra Leone. S...

While our profession has been female-dominated for most, if not all, of its history, leadership positions are disproportionately occupied by men. In addition, there are significant gender inequities with regard to the global unmet needs of rehabilitation. Women accounted for just over half of the 2.4 billion people worldwide living with conditions that would benefit from rehabilitation services ac...

Increasing diversity, equity and inclusion, commonly abbreviated as DEI, has been in the forefront of many sectors. Within health, providing culturally sensitive care and having a professional body that is diverse can lead to improved health outcomes. The conversation often involves ensuring clinicians practice cultural sensitivity during care, forming executive committees that are representative...

Today’s episode is all about reflexivity. The show co-hosts discuss their individual positionalities and examine how their lived experiences and socialization may influence the podcast. The show co-hosts share their dream of creating a podcast that is relevant to physiotherapists all over the world, amplifies voices that have been historically silenced and breaks down barriers with regard to knowl...

The biopsychosocial model has been touted as an effective approach towards addressing physiotherapy-related health conditions for its ability to guide clinicians to think beyond biomedical factors. The shift to integrate subjective experiences, psychological and social aspects to understand a patient’s lived experiences is a step forward beyond purely patho-anatomical explanations of pain and disa...

Environmental physiotherapy is an emerging practice area. There are physiotherapists all over the world calling for more sustainable physiotherapy practices. Moreover, there is a growing consciousness within physiotherapy globally around the environmental injustices experienced by equity deserving groups. A lot of people, including physiotherapists, may experience stagnation when confronted by the...