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INTERVIEW
Mag. Patricia Otuka-Karner
How do members like Physio Austria
benefit from their membership?
WCPT member organisations like Physio Aus-
tria gain a wide range of benefits from WCPT.
Through our policies, all member organisati-
ons have internationally agreed benchmarks,
set by the profession itself, to inform health
and social policy.
In the field of education, WCPT helps its
member organisations develop high quality
education through policies, curriculum guide-
lines, website resources and education
services. It offers a continuing professional
development programme and partners with
organisations providing continuing professio-
nal development.
The Confederation provides advocacy and
support, promotional materials (for example
for World Physical Therapy Day) and access
to a wide range of international professional
networks. Members of Physio Austria may
become part of one of the 13 WCPT net-
works and if they are members of Physio
Austria sections or networks on manual
therapy, older people, paediatrics or sports
physiotherapy, then they are members of the
WCPT subgroups – IFOMPT, IPTOP, IOPTP,
IFSPT. For students and early career physio-
therapists we recently launched a new
network called WCPT Future.
Member organisations benefit from WCPT’s
data collection project. This compiles con-
sistent and comparable information about
the profession, its education, practice,
regulation and associations from all over the
world, to inform national and international
decision-making.
Member organisations and their members
also benefit from the information we provide,
and the structures we provide for sharing
and collaboration. On our website, we have a
significant range of materials on professional
development, practice and global health
issues, and we constantly publish news and
updates and keep people in touch via Twitter
and Facebook.
physio
austria
inform
September 2015
27
© Lumiere Photography for WCPT www.wcpt.org