Summary

English 250

Matthew Beth

            Physical therapy has been a strange and ambiguous field for the past several years. Up until this point, there has been no solid diagnostic criterion for physical therapist to diagnose from. Diagnostic criteria can be defined as a set of standards that a person must posses to a certain ailment. Instead of having this criterion, physical therapists have had to use their own prior knowledge and the works of other physical therapists to formulate their methods of treatment and diagnosis. Having said this, texts such as the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH) have become major tools of communication and diagnosis materials between the therapists in this field. Alan M Jette, a health policy professor at Boston University, addressed this criteria dissonance in his academic journal entitled “Diagnosis and Classification by Physical Therapists: A Special Communication”.
            ICIDH was developed by the World Health Organization in order to classify what impairment, disability and handicaps truly entail. It defines impairment as “any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiologic, or anatomic structure within a specific

organ or system of the body.” It stats that a disability is “defined as any restriction or

lack of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered

normal for a human being.” Lastly, it defines a handicap as “a disadvantage that limits or prevents an individual's fulfillment of a role that is normal.” This helps physical therapists identify and define the severity of a patient’s ailment. While this information has proven useful and informative to physical therapists across the nation, there is a need for more diagnostic criteria.

            In his academic journal “Diagnosis and Classification by Physical Therapists: A Special Communication”, Alan M Jette believes that having a standard set of diagnostic criteria would lead to a better understanding of ailments, the duration in which they last, severity of the ailments, as well as allow physical therapists to identify the sequence in which an ailment occurs and heals. Currently, physical therapists have the ability to diagnose a patient on their own. Without having a solidified manual of diagnostic criteria, the actual diagnosis process can be difficult on a physical therapist. A patient may come in to a clinic with an ailment that is outside of a physical therapist’s specialty area. Without having a set of criteria, the physical therapist could fall into a common mistake of misdiagnosing his or her patient.
            Jette later states that there also shouldn’t be a sense of ownership in saying a “physical therapist diagnosis”.  He uses an example of a person who had a cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and how many physicians other than a physical therapist could diagnose CVA. He believes that having a standard set of diagnostic criteria would also remove the sense of ownership in diagnoses across different medical disciplines. Having the sense of ownership of a diagnosis hinders the communication between the various disciplines and thus hinders the patient from receiving the best rehabilitation they could receive.

            Throughout his journal “Diagnosis and Classification by Physical Therapists: A Special Communication”, Jette describes diagnostic criteria that is already in place for physical therapists and the medical field as a whole. He also elaborates on our need for more solidified criteria in order to better diagnose patients, remove ownership of diagnosis’s and to remove communication barriers between the various medical disciplines. Without any new written criteria, rehabilitation will never truly reach the full potential that it could achieve. 



Jette, Alan M. "Diagnosis and Classification by Physical Therapists: A Special Communication." Diagnosis and Classification by Physical Therapists: A Special Communication. American Physical Therapy Association, n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.