2 Physiotherapy at AUT

Although an early training in massage was offered to nurses in Auckland in 1913, the course was to be short lived and it would be another 60 years before Auckland established a second physiotherapy training school. 

Having only one training school had some significant disadvantages, not least the fact that students were required to travel and live in Dunedin to train, and training numbers were inadequate to significantly grow the profession.  By the 1960s, the shortage of physiotherapists in practice had become chronic but attempts to start a second school proved fruitless. 

At the same time, unsuccessful efforts were being made to incorporate physiotherapy into the university system and for it to become a degree course in 1941, 1946, 1950 and 1958, and in 1965 Professor Alan Alldred – a Dunedin-based orthopaedic surgeon – completed an inquiry which recommended that physiotherapy training should be transferred to the universities.  This was however rejected by the Otago University Grants Committee. 

In 1970, the Department of Health recognised that there were not enough physiotherapists training to supply the needs of the hospital system in the future (note, this was before the emergence of ACC and the explosion of interest in private practice).  At the same time, the Department of Health transferred the responsibility for funding physiotherapy education to the Department of Education which offered to house a second school in Wellington.  

A site at Heretaunga was reviewed (much to the dismay of the Physiotherapy Board and NZSP) but this was considered unsuitable because it was too far from a medical school or teaching hospital.  Interestingly, the site came to house podiatry training, which would be transferred to AUT University in 2002.  A second course at ATI was recommended at this stage but the Department of Education preferred a site in Wellington.

CIT was offered as an interim course, to overcome the now dire shortages of physiotherapists in training, with the promise of a move to ATI later, and plans were put in place for an intake in 1972.  Public rancour, professional agitation and the lack of support from doctors led to an agreement that a second school would be established at ATI in Auckland 'working in close relationship with the medical school and the (Auckland) hospital complex.'

Finding a suitable site took a year and it was not until June 1972 that Cabinet approved the establishment of the Auckland School on the Grafton Road site in Auckland.  The first intake beginning in March 1973 with Fran Elkin appointed as the Head of Department (hear Fran talk about this time in her oral history interview.)

Grafton Campus

 

ATI First Intake

Despite many years of lobbying, the approval of three-year diploma in physiotherapy at a second school at AIT left many people scrambling to try to get the school ready for its first cohort in early 1973.  Students who had applied for training in Dunedin were confused to learn that they had been approved for a place in Auckland.  The accommodation for the students at Grafton was substandard, and equipment had to be hurriedly purchased, borrowed or made.  Staff came from local hospitals and practices with only weeks to prepare for the start of the school year. 

As early as 1975 dissatisfaction with polytechnic- and technical school-based training began to emerge.  People argued that physiotherapy needed to be a degree programme and that more post-qualification training was needed.  Post-basic courses began at ATI as early as 1975, and full time options began in 1982 with five students enrolled in the one-year full time Advanced Diploma in Physiotherapy in Manual Therapy – the first formal postgraduate qualification for physiotherapists in New Zealand.  Pressure for a better standard of education increased in 1978 with the Commission of Inquiry into Chiropractic which showed physiotherapy training to be inadequate (listen to Don McKenzie talk of the impact that the Chiroporactic Commission report had on the profession.) 

Working parties were convened and numerous meetings with government officials and ministers were held to no avail.  In 1979, a survey of the profession undertaken by Judith Wilson and Grace Wilson showed that only 39% of the profession felt well prepared to practice as a physiotherapist.  And Margaret Moon's survey of physiotherapists in 1983 showed that physiotherapists looking for further education were going elsewhere.  Only 20 physiotherapists in New Zealand had degrees, and of these, most were in psychology.  This, it was argued, was limiting the quality of education and research coming back into the profession.  By 1984, New Zealand was one of the only English speaking countries that did not have a degree-based physiotherapy training. 

The profession's concern for the competence of entry-level practitioners led the Physiotherapy Board to call for a review of graduates which was undertaken by the Research and Statistics division of the Department of Education in 1983.  This report, titled An Evaluation of Physiotherapists Trained in Technical Institutes.

In August of the same year, after 10 years at Grafton Campus, the Physiotherapy Department moved to the recently acquired Akoranga Campus on Auckland's North Shore.  And in 1983, ATI established an Advanced Diploma in Physiotherapy which would, in five years time, become recognised as equivalent to a bachelors degree.

In 1986 a Department of Education-run Workshop on Physiotherapy Training identified the need for physiotherapy to move from a three-year Diploma of Physiotherapy to a bachelor's degree, primarily because of the growing need for students to engage in research and to be trained in critical thinking to fulfil their role as autonomous, first contact practitioners. 

After many years of negotiation and planning, AIT received approval from NZQA for a Bachelor of Health Science (Physiotherapy) programme which became the only degree programme offered by a polytechnic.

In 1994, having seen the school's inception, the move to a new campus, and create a dedicated bachelor's degree in physiotherapy, Fran Elkin retired from the Head of Department position to be replaced by Andrea Vujnovich.  In the same year, ATI began offering a Master of Health Science with physiotherapy options, adding its first distance learning-based papers in neurodevelopment, and a postgraduate certificate in acupuncture.