Communicating proprioception in physiotherapy by video Lucas M Seuren, University of Oxford

Event details

York Sociology Seminars

In order to diagnose and monitor a patient’s condition, patients and clinicians routinely have to establish how the patient’s body feels or should feel for the patient. They need to establish the patient’s proprioception, the sense through which they establish the location, movement, and actions of the patient’s body. These experiences are inherently internal for the patient. For in-person interaction, patients and physios have found ways, supported by physical touch.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, physiotherapy services have routinely started to use video consultations to monitor and assess patients. This poses a new challenge to participants. Patients still do exercises and physical assessments, but accurate assessment cannot be supported through physical touch. They have to rely on other means to establish the patient’s experiences of their body. This seminar investigates how patients and clinicians collaboratively establish the patient’s proprioception via video. It focuses on two types activities: (i) how patients communicate their experiences of their body and (ii) how physios communicate how the patient’s body should feel.

The seminar is part of an NIHR-funded project: Supporting Consultations in Remote Physiotherapy. Analysis is based on 15 video-recorded video consultations, collected across two NHS Trusts in three specialist physiotherapy settings: long-term pain, neurorehabilitation, and orthopaedics.