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.