Ethics in my place of work..

This is a topic that I have been looking forward to writing about since I initially read through the Module 2 handbook. It's something I think I could write for hours on so I will try my best to condense into bite-size sections so that you don't have to read pages and pages of me waffling on. Ethics inside a professional ballet company can be considered somewhat a "grey area". There are obvious ethics that are relevant in any working environment like always being courteous, no bad language, punctuality and doing your job to the best of your ability but in dance some standard rules of thumb can/have to be bent in order to do your job properly.

My best example of this is physical contact. I know many of my fellow colleagues on this course are teachers and must have very strict rules on what is "appropriate" contact with students and what isn't. Dancers in a professional ballet company on the other hand, don't really have those rules. Because so much of a male dancers career relies on being able to partner female dancers efficiently from all areas of their body, there will be times where you have your hands in places that don't seem appropriate to people who aren't dancers. This is just part of our job.

Another good example of differing ethics is professional work attire. Most office jobs require you to wear smart suit like clothing, dance teachers are usually required to wear at least a t-shirt representing the school/organisation they work for. My work attire for example ranges from full one piece dance leotard to a Ramones t-shirt with pajama shorts. For dancers (especially female dancers) the less worn on the body the better. That way ballet masters can see the lines of your body and male dance partners have an easier time partnering and lifting women. A pet peeve for many male ballet dancers is partnering girls who insist on wearing massive amounts of baggy clothing as it is much more difficult to grip, lift and maneuver the dancer.

Personal preparation and responsibility is the biggest ethical task of my day because it encompasses so many different aspects.  It is my responsibility to have my body prepared for the days rehearsals or show to be able to dance to the best of my ability and to not injure myself unnecessarily. It is my responsibility to know the choreography that I am meant to as to not waste the companies time nor endanger who ever else I am on stage with. As my body is my profession and without it I don't have one, self maintenance is such an important part of my daily work schedule. Everything down to making sure I eat right, sleep enough and wear appropriate clothes.

Something that I really love about my profession is what I mentioned above, my body is my job. I know that in some workplaces people can run into some ethical problems when others will try for example to take credit for someone else's work, in my profession that is impossible. You get as much as you give and your employer will notice that because it is shown in your work through your own body. Another important point that other work places would run into is people using company time for personal business. When you are partnering or dancing, your 100% concentration has to be in that moment you are working. If you lose sight or concentration for even just a second, someone could get very badly hurt. So in some respects, that is an ethical problem that I personally don't have to worry about but could be disastrous if it became an issue in my workplace.

Even after trying to condense my thoughts, I still feel like I have waffled on a bit. Apologies for that. I would be really interested to see what other ethical problems people have in their own workplace and compare whether some of them could relate back into my own. It's a subject I am interested in and would love to get a discussion going in the comments below.

Literature findings...

So this part of the task has been a struggle for me. I've been searching and searching but considering how prominent dance physiotherapy is in a professional ballet company atmosphere, there is surprisingly little literature on the internet about it regarding my specific set of questions. After exhausting google, scholar, summon and asking friends for their library cards, I finally found a few pieces of literature that are important to my line of inquiry.

As it is the broadest question of mine, there seems to be a lot more information on the 'treatment' aspect of a physiotherapists presence in a ballet company, as apposed to budgeting and ratio of physiotherapists to dancers. Injury prevention has a more literature written and one article stuck with me the most.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3871955/#__sec3title

This article is all about prevention of injuries for dancers and approaches many different important points in rehabilitation, prevention and why dancers get injured in the first place. It is by far the most in depth and useful piece of literature that I have come across in my hours of searching. An interesting quote which I felt related to my own inquiry was "Participation in dance is not sufficiently intense across long duration's to substantially improve aerobic capacity." I thought that this was an excellent observation and led me to ponder on how it could be in-cooperated into dancers lives and what effect it would have on recovery times of dancers and general well being in regards to injury prevention. Would having better long term aerobic capacity help prevent injuries? As someone who works hard on their own cardiovascular stamina I would have to disagree with this statement in a professional atmosphere. Professional dancers must have the stamina to do full length ballets, sometimes twice a day for weeks at a time without picking up injuries, I would say that we have incredibly good "aerobic capacity". Whether that comes specifically from ballet training alone or whether we obtain a lot of that strength from gym work is something that would need research and testing but another interesting question that I have thought over a lot. I felt like this section of the article linked well to my own questions as the subject they are discussing has a direct correlation with how a physiotherapist would give the knowledge to treat a dancer.

An article I found that was less formal and much shorter than the above was this, written by Dinah Hampson. 

http://www.iadms.org/blogpost/1177934/208418/Physiotherapy-with-the-heart-of-a-dancer--a-personal-history

I am learning that my interest in the questions I have asked pointing strongly towards my initial and broadest question "Does treatment from a physiotherapist shorten recovery time?" Something I really liked about this article was the personal touch it gave. She writes directly about how it is important for a dancer to have a physiotherapist with a dancing background as it "is important for recognizing subtle alterations in normal movement, changes in motor patterns and compensatory muscle activity.  If left unaddressed, these subtle changes in movement are risk factors for delayed recovery and future injury". To me that screamed the importance of having someone who understood how dancers moved inside and outside of the studio. I feel it would help the physiotherapist monitor how a professional dancer would recover from an injury, looking at it from a dance professional background. 

I find that as I continue searching for articles related to my questions, I am learning that most of my information that I am trying to acquire will come from interviews, discussions and brain picking with professionals, as apposed to written research related articles. I was unable to find a single article written on whether treatment from a professional physiotherapist actually shortens recovery time. I found that astonishing. Perhaps it is just a known thing to go to a physiotherapist when you have an injury, but has anyone stopped to write an article with an apposing opinion? That's the reason I have only included two pieces of literature in this task, I am determined to find a third that will directly answer my question. Perhaps from there I will learn more about the questions I am asking.

If anyone happens to have stumbled across any literature that answers my questions I would extremely interested in reading it. Would also love to hear from others who are interested in this topic of inquiry as we always have space for more in our SIG groups.

Look forward to reading responses. 

Questioning the professionals...

So this is something I've actually been excited to do for a long time. Often in our working environment we are so busy that finding time (or a genuine reason) to sit down with your bosses and/or professional colleagues and talk about your professional life can be very difficult. So I reveled in the opportunity to be able to pick their brains.

At first I decided to go in big and sit down with my boss and her responses were "interesting" to say the least. I found that asking my questions in a conversational manner actually opened them up to lots of questions within questions that I hadn't properly considered. Just one example, I asked my boss if she thought that the amount of money budgeted for physiotherapy treatment had an impact on recovery time? She actually said no. Which surprised me a lot. She responded with questions like "do you think just because you throw money at something that it gets better?" Of course I had appropriate responses trying to explain that better equipment could mean more accurate results, faster recovery time and equipment to help prevent injury in the first place, but it did open my eyes to seeing things a little less black and white.

After much deliberation on this particular topic and a 45 minute meeting something incredible actually happened.. She told me she was impressed with my questioning regarding budget management and amazingly I managed to negotiate more funding to be put into injury prevention in our theater! Yesterday we received our first ultrasound treatment machine into our physio suite. I was most pleased with myself as initially I had only intended to interview my boss to develop my questions and understand the opinion of something from a senior position in my company. The copious amounts of notes I took and voice recording of our conversation and the many many questions I asked will be imperative in helping me develop my questions further.


Interviewing my now very happy physio was a breeze. She and I had extremely similar opinions on many of the questions I brought to her and as she was a dancer herself before studying physiotherapy she understood even more than I did about the importance of having a dance background when treating professional dancers.  She really helped me develop my own questions and gave me a clear insight into a professional physiotherapists perspective. When asking her specifically if she thought whether the ratio of physios to dancers has an effect on the severity and amount of injuries, she gave me some useful insight. She spoke at length about how most of her job is educating us dancers rather than treating us. I found that interesting as of course she is employed to "fix" dancers but believes that it's more important to educate to prevent injury which seems almost like a conflict of interests... No dancers to fix, no work her. I guess she is looking at the long term/bigger picture.  She herself had studied at length what the effects of not having enough education on your own body whilst dancing can do and gave me some good pointers to think about. As someone who knows more about their own body than the average dancer (due to interest in physiotherapy from a young age) I'm starting to consider a more specific set of questions around myself to get answers that will relate and help me more in my own professional practice.


Last came the dancers, my fellow associates. This was of course the most informal discussion by far. The conversational process actually took place on our main theater stage before a show. As none of us are professional physiotherapists but are all professional dancers, the conversations were much more personal and specific to our everyday working practice and daily steps that we take to prevent and manage injuries. A lot of emphasis was put on the importance of warming up properly, a healthy diet and even down to what clothes you wear whilst performing. This broadened my line of thinking also. Of course their knowledge on budgeting and the the science behind physiotherapy treatment was limited but they could speak of the first hand and direct effects it has on their everyday working life.


Having interviewed all of these different members of  numerous positions within our company, it has been more helpful than I could have ever imagined in developing my inquiry. Getting answers and having an open discussion with all sorts of different platforms within my company has given me more knowledge in how I wish to develop my inquiry further.

After taking some of the responses to my SIG groups on different platforms their responses were a little overwhelming. A lot of questions have been emerging and the open dialogue between professionals and people who are in the same position as I am has been very insightful. I'm looking forward to finding some literature that are related to my topics and bringing that to the table.

SIG's and developing questions..

This section of the module has been a bit trickier for me than I initially thought. I have found it much harder to establish some kind of SIG on the programme than I have within my own professional company. Luckily Grace (gracehume.blogspot.com.) and I are coming at this from a very similar angle in regards to physiotherapy, so it was nice to establish contact with her through blog comments and Facebook to discuss different questions that we both had on the topic.

We were discussing the importance of physios within dance companies and how their knowledge on dance is just as important as their knowledge of treating injuries. We discussed that at school we had a fantastic physiotherapist who specialized in sports injuries but that sometimes she would treat our injuries how she would treat a footballer or rugby player (those were her main clients) and so sometimes small details would be lost because of that slight lack of dance specific knowledge. I think maintaining an open conversation with Grace and others throughout this module will be really beneficial and help me understand and establish exactly what I want answered and how to approach it properly.

Rebecca (rebeccajones387.blogspot.com) posted a very interesting comment that left me thinking for a while which was "Are dancers given enough support and guidance to prevent injury as well as support when recovering?" It's a question I took to my professional colleagues and amongt all of the people I spoke to, our answers were all no. It's something that definitely needs to be addressed from an early professional education age. I posted before that injury is an inevitability at some point during a career, so understanding how to deal with it is something that should be taught during training, not learnt as it's happening or happened. 

As well as communicating with other BAPP members, I have also started following many different esteemed physiotherapists on multiple platforms of social media, but mainly Facebook to hear what they have to say. A lot of them post about situations which involve ethical choices which I found interesting as it is something we will learn more about further into the course. My favorite that I have come across so far is a physiotherapist called Adam Meakins. He posts a lot about others unprofessional opinions on social media and the differences between a physio and a PHYSIO. It's been interesting to read his blogs as they are the first physiotherapy specific blogs I've read. 

Thought I'd write a quick blog post just to see what everyone else thought and if anyone has had similar experiences with their own SIG's? Look forward to reading some responses :)

Skype session with Adesola - 04/10/16

After coming off of my Skype session with Adesola and fellow BAPP students I thought I would blog straight away as everything is still digesting, but fresh in my mind.

The skype session was extremely useful. Before the session began I had a whole list of questions that I thought I wanted answering, but as time passed and we discussed at length more about the process of learning, those questions seemed to pale into insignificance. As I mentioned in my first blog post of this module, it's very easy to get wrapped up in your own world of BAPP and forget that there is a whole community of people who are in the same ship.

Something that really stuck with me from this skype call was the sense of community. The questions I had initially wanted answering were all based around SIG platforms, whats the best approach of creating these groups etc and it wasn't until Adesola pushed me to answer my own question, as apposed to relying on the answer from others, that I found the answers I was looking for. It wasn't until I used my own knowledge and experience to help a fellow BAPP student with an question that I understood that it wasn't so much the question he needed answering, it was the sense of community and reassurance that helped the most. That lead me to think that developing SIG groups and finding people who are interested in the same subjects that I am will be hugely beneficial to bounce ideas off of, share research methods and help with my own reassurance.

Adesola talked about 'trusting the process' and using 'different types of intelligence' to help us with our work and I definitely agree. If we already knew what we were going to learn about and had the answers to the questions we are asking.. What would we actually be learning?