President's Message

Welcome to the International Society of Educators in Physiotherapy in 2005. I am delighted to finally get the web site up and running again and have brought it up to date. ISEP's aim is to capitalize on its worldwide network to share innovative educational practices amongst physiotherapy educators.

ISEP meets formally every four years in conjunction with the WCPT Congress. The next Congress will be held in Vancouver, Canada in 2007. We are planning an ISEP meeting immediately after the Congress.

Regional meetings of WCPT occur in between the main Congress and we have been trying to have an ISEP meeting at these regional meetings. In November 2004 the European region had an Educators conference and ISEP had a meeting during this time. In November 2005 I will attend the AWP regional meeting in Soeul, South Korea and will run an ISEP meeting. It would be good to be able to arrange ISEP meetings in all regions of WCPT linked in time to Regional WCPT Congresses so watch out for news about educators meetings in your own region.

ISEP had its origins in Symposium for Physiotherapy Educators in London in 1991 and was formally constituted in 1995 in Winchester, Virginia. The Society is a network of physiotherapy educators from nations around the world whose purpose is to identify and share common issues, themes and strategies for the enhancement of physiotherapy education around the world.

We are currently working on trying to become a special group of WCPT. To do this we need to be changing our constitution to make member countries members. We will also continue to have individual membership. I will keep you up to on how we are progressing.

At the moment there are a number of positions that are held within the group. I am the President and am an Australian, the Vice president Leena Noranen is from Finland and the Secretary/ treasurer Judy Canfield is from the USA. Each of the regions has representation.

The objectives of ISEP include:

a)   Setting up an electronic and paper-based Newsletter in which we can share news of educational initiatives and activities.

b)   Providing opportunities for physiotherapy educators to meet together face-to-face within their own region and internationally.

c)   Providing a collegial network to promote excellence in physiotherapy education and practice.

I hope that I can meet with many of you and apologise for the delay in getting the web site up to date. We have resolved these issues now and I look forward to continuing the electronic newsletter through the web site.

I look forward to meeting many of you in person at ISEP Conferences and communicating with you by email or fax.

For more information about ISEP, about who your Regional Representatives are, about membership, please follows links from the ISEP home page.