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.