Shaping Osteopathy » Mary Monro http://shapingosteopathy.org Digitally engaging with the consultation process Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:33:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 Defining Osteopathy & Keeping It Whole http://shapingosteopathy.org/gosc-consultations/practice-framework/defining-osteopathy-keeping-it-whole/ http://shapingosteopathy.org/gosc-consultations/practice-framework/defining-osteopathy-keeping-it-whole/#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 20:47:52 +0000 Mary Monro http://shapingosteopathy.org/?p=434 I attended the GOsC meeting at the weekend and I was impressed with their new openness and receptiveness to the profession. They happily accept that the documents produced to date are flawed first drafts. This makes it even more important for everyone to respond, as they are open to change. There were about 170 delegates there. I asked for a show of hands for ‘who thinks dividing osteopathy into categories is a good idea?‘ and only one hand was raised.

I have done an analysis on Google News Archive for 1999-2009. This searches for all relevant press articles for a given time period (in English). The results are as follows:

osteopathy = 6860 articles, of which:
osteopathy + back pain = 1400 articles (20%)
osteopathy + children = 1010 articles (15%)
osteopathy + athletes = 533 articles (8%)
osteopathy + cranial osteopathy = 185 articles (3%)
osteopathy + joint manipulation = 19 articles (0.3%)

I think this shows that treatment of children is as ‘core’ as treating back pain in the minds of the public. It also indicates that defining ourselves by the techniques we use is not meaningful. One osteopath at the meeting summed up the definition of osteopathy by saying ‘we treat structure to restore function‘. I’m not sure we need to get any more complicated than that.

]]> http://shapingosteopathy.org/gosc-consultations/practice-framework/defining-osteopathy-keeping-it-whole/feed/ 2