The 8th Physiotherapy Round Table held in San Francisco opened with a “Meet and Greet” session over tea and coffee, giving everyone the opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones. An important aspect of this Round Table meeting is that it is open to everyone, not only physiotherapists, and gives new ICS members, PhD students as well as local physiotherapists the opportunity to meet physiotherapists from all over the world. The main aims of the Round Table meeting are science, education and communication.
Following a welcome by Beth Shelley representing the USA physiotherapists, committee chair Marijke van Kampen presented the work of the physiotherapy committee over 2008-2009 and explained its main aims as follows:
Science:
- Involving physiotherapists in the workshops and courses, encouraging physiotherapy research and organising an international scientific study group.
Education:
- Creating a list of interested physiotherapist speakers for educational courses, working with other ICS members on an educational course in Pattaya, Thailand 2009 and an educational course in Bucharest, Romania in 2010, encouraging physiotherapy research within our workshops and networking meetings, producing educational material specific to physiotherapy, collaborating with different countries for a Master of Physical Therapy of the Pelvic Floor and defining the competence profile of a pelvic floor physiotherapist.
Communication:
- Organising the Round Table, setting up a website with educational, scientific and communication information with a database of physiotherapist members, research, interests and activities.
Achievements in 2008-2009
Achievements in the past year included the Round Table in Cairo (2008) and in San Francisco (2009) with both a scientific and a communication programme; a meeting on Wednesday, 30 September in San Francisco for committee members; collaboration with different countries for a Master of Physical Therapy of the Pelvic Floor; definition of the competence profile of a pelvic floor physiotherapist; providing a physiotherapist delegate for the ICS Educational Course in Pattaya, Thailand in April 2009 and contributing towards the physiotherapy section of the History of the ICS project currently in progress.
Future activities and aims
The committee plans to organise a Round Table at ICS 2010 in Toronto and to provide a physiotherapy delegate for an ICS educational course in Bucharest, Romania in 2010. It will also draw up a list of physiotherapists willing to speak at ICS educational courses. The committee will set up a website with a database. It also plans to collaborate with physiotherapists worldwide, with other committees and other disciplines, and also to cooperate with different countries in creating a Master of Physical Therapy of the Pelvic Floor, taking account of the physiotherapy culture in other countries.
Chantal Dumoulin, member of the ICS Board of Trustees, gave a detailed report of her work as trustee, after which Marijke Slieker ten Hove explained about the collaboration between the ICS and IUGA.
Round Table scientific programme.
In the scientific programme, Kari Bø discussed a project to be realised in Norway aimed at following primiparous women prospectively from week 18 to 12 months postpartum, measuring the Pelvic Floor Muscle (PFM) function, and conducting a single blind randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effect of postpartum PFM training on pelvic floor injury recovery and urinary incontinence.
Marijke Slieker-ten Hove presented a summary of her PhD thesis on Pelvic floor function and dysfunction in a general female population aged 45-85 years in the Netherlands. A prognostic index (Slieker Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP) score) was created for estimating clinically relevant POP in a general population.
The topic addressed by Els Bakker was dysfunction of the core-stabilisation muscles in the pathophysiology of chronic low back pain and stress urinary in continence and consequences for our re-education, while Linda McLean discussed the effect of changes in standing lumbopelvic posture on PFM activity.
A team of experts then led an interactive discussion, with everyone able to ask questions about assessment and treatment of pelvic floor dysfunctions. The 2009 Physiotherapy Round Table was then rounded off with a buffet, giving the participating physiotherapists from around the world the opportunity to mingle and chat informally.
By Marijke Van Kampen