La figura del Practicante como precedente profesional del Fisioterapeuta en España

Resumen

The historica/ roots of physiotherapy are linked with the figure of the practitioner, being this professional figure that assumed, at first, much of the functions that today represen! the competence framework of contemporary physiotherapy. This work dea/s with the historica/ period between the 16th and first half of the 20th, focusing on those significan! aspects to /earn how the practitioner is set up as the predecessor figure of the physiotherapist, its features, functions and competences. The 16th to 18th centuries are placed in the prelude to the birlh of the figure of the practitioner, finding described in works su eh as " lnstruction nurses" ((1625) and "Directory of nurses" ( 1651) so me procedures related to the history of physical therapy, such as the use of ointments in cerlain types of massage, hydrotherapy techniques or techniques of thermotherapy. The 19th century, and more specificalfy its second half, constitutes a key moment in the genesis and devefopment of the practitioner, especial/y alter the faw of public instruction of Moyana faw of 1857. lfs a constant during the legal existence of the figure of the practitioner (1857-1953), especial/y in the first decades of the 20th century, the changes in the regufations which regufated both their studies and their functions, which are clasely refated to the contemporary physiotherapy. This difficufty has been duein part to the need and obligation to live together and share common areas with other professions such as the midwife and the nurse. This historica/ diversity makes Spanish physiotherapy to /ive an ama/gam of competence at its inception that have littfe to do with physicaf therapy which was being devefoped in other countries of the worfd, but its historicaf profife that centrafizes in the figure of the practitioner. We can say that untif 1950, functionaf recoverywhich builds Spanish physiotherapy was carried out by practitioners, which, since 1902, endorsed in 1945, assume legal/y the impfementation of therapeutic massage functions, as well as the use of mechanicaf and thermotherapy, while Spain remained afoof of the true evo/ution of physiotherapy in the international fiefd.