I have come increasingly to the view that it is senseless to try to categorise Osteopathy according to presenting complaint, patient group or treatment method. The whole point of Osteopathy is that we don’t treat the presenting complaint, we treat the patient to allow them to recover normally. Every patient is unique and the factors that are disrupting health will be unique to every patient. There is more than one way of skinning a cat – the technique used will depend upon the presentation, the patient, the osteopath and quite possibly other factors such as the time of day! And, the way I perform any single technique will be different from every other osteopath, to some degree.

All of which means that it is misleading to suggest that there could be a “typical” patient experience. There is no such thing as a typical patient or a typical osteopath. In teh context of Osteopathy, “typical” is meaningless.

SO – the OPF needs to be comlpetely re-thought on a different basis.

Any offers?