Welcome back to our AuSAE Member Chat Series – Half an Hour of Power. This week we are delighted to have sat down with AuSAE member, Julie Dwyer, Communications, Media & Stakeholder Engagement Manager, Australian Physiotherapy Association.
In a short 30 minute interview we discussed four key questions with Julie to reflect on the last four months and look forward to the future post this crisis.
What do the next 6 months look like for your association and your members?
As with all organisations across the country, COVID has had a huge impact on the physiotherapy profession, in particular private practitioners. The constantly updated health information, which has been different in each state, has been challenging for our members, as has the second wave of infections in Victoria with its increased level of restrictions.
Member value has always been our top priority, so helping rebuild business support and ensuring our professional development options are accessible to all members, whether that be face to face or online, is very important. Our focus on key advocacy priorities is also going to be a big part of our continuing work – ensuring that the voice of physios and their patients is heard and valued particularly in relation to treatment accessibility, funding and scope of practice.
Areas of concern
The unknowns around COVID continue to cause concern for our members and staff, ie how the pandemic will affect our member renewal and acquisition programs, and what other key priority issues will emerge for us to prosecute fully for our members and their patients in the post-COVID world.
The ability for our professional leaders and wider membership to congregate in person for events such as our annual conference as well as professional advisory council meetings is another longer term concern. While we have all learned to Zoom, FaceTime and Team-meet, it really isn’t the same as being together in a room to discuss, debate and agree on measures to best represent the profession.
Areas of opportunity
We have really learnt to move fast and communicate in new ways with our members over the past several months to support their needs; this is an area that we’ll continue to develop and innovate in. For example, instead of our long planned annual face to face conference and professional development courses this year, our professional development team pivoted quickly to virtual exhibitor show cases, job shows, live lecture series and an increasing number of online courses and webinars to engage and further enhance professional learning within our membership.
Telehealth is another area of opportunity for physios, many of whom had not taken up this option prior to COVID. In a matter of a few weeks the organisation put together fully detailed telehealth guidelines and significant FAQs to support members transitioning to this platform.
Celebrated moments in the last four months
Definitely a key achievement has been how agile our communications and advocacy support has been for our members. We worked around the clock during the heady days of the 1st and 2nd waves of infection and our teams really stood up to the challenge. Fast, accurate and detailed communications has been a hallmark of our work and our members have appreciated that enormously in these uncertain times.
