Talk:Physical therapy

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – Hilst [talk] 11:53, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Physical therapy →  – I have come to see that time changes things and believe the profession's choice should be respected. The World Confederation for Physical Therapy (note it is now a redirect) has even changed its name to World Physiotherapy because of confusion over terminology and the number of people using the terms.
Here are some links that discuss the title change:
* New brand and website for global physiotherapy body
* WCPT to Change Name
The two major reasons for change are
#  brand confusion
# "The majority of our member organisations use physiotherapy and physiotherapist to describe the profession and the people who work in the profession."
Those are good enough reasons for me to support a move from Physical Therapy to Physiotherapy.
There are two name change discussions in the archives:
* Geographic scope: Title change
* Support "Physical Therapy" as the title of the article.
I am a retired PT, and under my previous username of Fyslee, I supported keeping "Physical Therapy" as the title. I have changed my mind. The profession's choice should be respected.
While a search for the two terms in English will show that "Physical Therapy" is used more in English than "Physiotherapy" (Americentrism at play in searches!), we need to ask ourselves whether we want to document reality ("The majority of our member organisations use physiotherapy and physiotherapist to describe the profession") or just use of the word in English? English is not the sum total of reality. America's dominance in this area is apparent, as other English-speaking countries use Physiotherapy, and there are far more of them than there are Americans. This is an example where we need to assign proper due weight by reducing Americentrism.
Many languages use various forms of Physiotherapy that do not show in an English search. Fysioterapi won't show, and that's Scandinavia. Fisioterapia is Spanish. Many languages do this, and none of them will show up in an English search. Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:42, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

text: Note: WikiProject Medicine has been notified of this discussion. – robertsky (talk) 04:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

text: Note: WikiProject Health and fitness has been notified of this discussion. – robertsky (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

text: Note: WikiProject Disability has been notified of this discussion. – robertsky (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Regardless of which is more common outside of the Untied States, we have WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN. "Physiotherapy" seems extremely rare in U.S. English, so there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for WP:COMMONALITY. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: If American physiotherapists actually call themselves physiotherapists, I'm not sure it can really be classed as "extremely rare"! -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I know, it would be rather rare to find that. Do you have evidence otherwise? The term "physical therapy" is clearly dominant in the U.S. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 03:27, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake. I was under the impression that the above suggested the American profession preferred the term as well. However, my comment about a fundamental misunderstanding in comments above that physical therapy is the common name and physiotherapy only the "official" name stands; this is not generally the case outside the US. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:29, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can tell, "physical therapy" is also very dominant as the official name, as well as being very dominant as the common name, in the United States. For example, the primary professional association is the American Physical Therapy Association, and its certifications are issued by the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties, and the premier accreditation agency for U.S. degree programs is the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education and the primary degree issued to practitioners is Doctor of Physical Therapy (and there have also been Bachelor and Master of Physical Therapy programs). American journals include the Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy and Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy and Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal. I searched the names of the accredited programs and degrees in several populous U.S. states (including California, New York, Texas and a couple others) and didn't find any that use the word "Physiotherapy". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 03:10, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 29 December 2023 

message: * Google Trends shows that there is no good possibility of WP:COMMONALITY here, as 98% of searches are for physical therapy in the United States. This points to a case in which we would normally retain the existing variety under WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN. Further, we do privilege common usage over official titles or "the profession's choice" (which is actually divided here) under WP:COMMONNAME and WP:OFFICIAL. To answer the final question, usage in English is the only concern for article titling on the English Wikipedia; whether the topic is a single word in foreign languages is not relevant (WP:EN). Dekimasuよ! 06:43, 30 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion 

message: :Note: WikiProject Medicine has been notified of this discussion. – robertsky (talk) 04:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: WikiProject Health and fitness has been notified of this discussion. – robertsky (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

text: Note: WikiProject Disability has been notified of this discussion. – robertsky (talk) 04:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Regardless of which is more common outside of the Untied States, we have WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN. "Physiotherapy" seems extremely rare in U.S. English, so there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for WP:COMMONALITY. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 16:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: If American physiotherapists actually call themselves physiotherapists, I'm not sure it can really be classed as "extremely rare"! -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I know, it would be rather rare to find that. Do you have evidence otherwise? The term "physical therapy" is clearly dominant in the U.S. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 03:27, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake. I was under the impression that the above suggested the American profession preferred the term as well. However, my comment about a fundamental misunderstanding in comments above that physical therapy is the common name and physiotherapy only the "official" name stands; this is not generally the case outside the US. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:29, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can tell, "physical therapy" is also very dominant as the official name, as well as being very dominant as the common name, in the United States. For example, the primary professional association is the American Physical Therapy Association, and its certifications are issued by the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties, and the premier accreditation agency for U.S. degree programs is the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education and the primary degree issued to practitioners is Doctor of Physical Therapy (and there have also been Bachelor and Master of Physical Therapy programs). American journals include the Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy and Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy and Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal. I searched the names of the accredited programs and degrees in several populous U.S. states (including California, New York, Texas and a couple others) and didn't find any that use the word "Physiotherapy". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 03:10, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Support or Oppose 

message: Because Indian editors often come here and try to change this content, this has to be said clearly:
* India's National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions includes the Physiotherapy profession in their official list of allied health professions (AHP).
This is in harmony with the practices of other nations, where all lists of AHP include Physiotherapy. If some nation specifically excludes Physiotherapy from their list, that can be mentioned under that nation's entry, but that does not change the general fact for this article. The classification of Physiotherapy as an AHP should not be removed here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:43, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see a reason you consider this "allied health profession" categorization to be important. Many articles about other professions that appear to be in the category (or excluded from the category) do not mention the category at all. The meaning of the term and the implications of using the term probably depend heavily on the country in which the term is being applied. The allied health profession article seems to have rather low quality, as it lacks clarity about this, and the sources on the subject don't seem very good. What is the point of saying that some professions are "allied health professions" and some are not? For example, why say that nursing and pharmacy and chiropractic care and clinical psychology are not AHPs but physical therapy is? What difference does it make? Who cares? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:49, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  Quite a few Indians and people from Pakistan and Arabic countries care. For years they have vandalized this article. I suspect part of the problem is language. They think that if a profession, in this case PT, is classified as an AHP, then it is not an independent profession. That's BS. In the case of India, they seem to be ignorant of what their own National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions says, as explained above. It contradicts what these vandals are always trying to do here. This section should be referred to when they try this. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:48, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree. I see no reason to mention this AHP concept at all, since it seems to have no clear meaning or implications, especially for most readers. If it has a meaning, the meaning seems to have something to do with the laws or healthcare systems of specific countries, so it should only be discussed in the context of a discussion of those countries, not in the lead section and especially not in the opening sentence. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, you are the first one to propose such a thing. Maybe we could eliminate the mention in the lead and only mention it in the body. In fact, there is no mention in the body!!! That makes the mention in the lead illegitimate. I'll move it to the body right now. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: If people have a misconception about what an "allied health profession" is, then perhaps that misconception should be addressed in the article about "allied health professions" (AHPs), but I still see no reason to discuss whether physical therapy is an AHP or not within this article. The purpose of this article is to provide information about physical therapy, not about AHPs. I don't see why the concept of an AHP is important to providing information about physical therapy (although moving that discussion from the lead section into the article body is an improvement). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  This has to do with our job here, which is to document the "sum of all human knowledge" (translated to English) about the PT profession that is written about in RS, and the fact that PT is classified as AHP is part of it. That's all. We don't write summaries here. We cover nearly everything. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 01:00, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not so. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of all information. It avoids inclusion of WP:UNDUE, distracting and misleading information, striving to explain only what is needed for conveying a reasonable summary level of understanding of the topics it discusses. It does not try to include every detail. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  India classifies Physiotherapy as an allied health profession