Men's Experiences With Managing Type 2 Diabetes and Their Encounters With Health Professionals: A Scoping Review.

Type 2 diabetes is on the rise globally, and previous research has identified gender as one known risk factor for developing this disease. Gender has also been reported to affect patients' experiences of managing type 2 diabetes. However, little is known of men's specific experiences with type 2 diabetes, as research with a gendered focus has concentrated more on women's experiences with the disease. This scoping review explores how research has addressed men's experiences of managing type 2 diabetes and their encounters with health professionals. The review consists of an iterative process, involving six steps: identification of the research questions, identification of relevant studies, study selection, charting the data, collating and summarizing results, and consultation with external stakeholders. Through the process, 28 publications were identified, which indicate a gap in research on patients' experiences with type 2 diabetes. The majority of the identified studies focuses on men from an ethnic minority due to their poorer health outcomes. However, a knowledge gap regarding men belonging to an ethnic or racial majority warrants further attention, as studies indicate that men who share similar social economic status face similar barriers to improving the management of type 2 diabetes. There is little discussion of how the gendered dynamics in encounters between patients and health professionals affect the management of type 2 diabetes. This review suggests a need for further research that explores how practices of masculinities, that is, the normative practices guiding men's behavior, intersect with men's experiences with type 2 diabetes in a broader perspective.

Critical physiotherapy: a ten-year retrospective.

Critical physiotherapy has been a rapidly expanding field over the last decade and could now justifiably be called a professional sub-discipline. In this paper we define three different but somewhat interconnected critical positions that have emerged over the last decade that share a critique of physiotherapy's historical approach to health and illness, while also diverging in the possibilities for new forms of practice and thinking. These three positions broadly align with three distinctive philosophies: approaches that emphasize lived experience, social theory, and a range of philosophies increasingly referred to as the "posts". In this paper we discuss the origins of these approaches, exploring the ways they critique contemporary physiotherapy thinking and practice. We offer an overview of the key principles of each approach and, for each in turn, suggest readings from key authors. We conclude each section by discussing the limits of these various approaches, but also indicate ways in which they might inform future thinking and practice. We end the paper by arguing that the various approaches that now fall under the rubric of critical physiotherapy represent some of the most exciting and opportune ways we might (re)think the future for the physiotherapy profession and the physical therapies more generally.

Patient-centeredness in Physiotherapy - A literature mapping review.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Research on patient-centeredness within physiotherapy points to a need for clarification about what the concept entails in science and practice and how research positions itself within health care. Thus, the aim is to systematically map the characteristics of research on patient-centeredness in physiotherapy and critically discuss the dominant understandings within. METHODS: A systematic research mapping was carried out, based on searches in leading bibliographic databases. Four categories were selected in order to characterize the research field: focus, design, theoretical approach and inherent logic. FINDINGS: Of 5,324 studies, 101 were included in the final mapping, pointing to a limited amount of research. The papers included were published in 47 different journals. Two major research foci emerges: one testing or developing technologies (tools) to promote patient-centeredness and one exploring patients' or professionals' experiences related to physiotherapy practice. Most papers reported on empirical research and there seems to be a dearth of conceptual papers. The theoretical approaches applied were mainly psychological, pedagogical and biomedical. The papers included were divided into equal amounts of studies carried out within inherent logics of causality and complexity. CONCLUSION: The mapping suggests an incipient awareness of patient-centeredness within the research field of physiotherapy. Empirical studies dominate the field, whereas conceptual and critical papers seem in need of wider acknowledgment. The research field is divided into two mutually disconnected trends: one concerned with understanding the complexity of clinical practice and patients' experiences of treatment and illness, and another trend concerned with solving "the problem" of patient involvement.