Last week I stumbled upon a fun game. I happened to read this post from Seth Godin, marketing guru of the information age. He detailed the sometimes overwhelmingly positive effects that good press in the Times can have on business. Shortly thereafter, I noticed a piece in the Times about Physical Therapy.
The NY Times has a nice feature where certain words are hyperlinked to other articles on the subject, all within their own website. It’s easy to see what the Times thinks of Physical Therapy, just click on the word Physical Therapy and see what you get. Alternatively, you can search the archives when the short-lived hyperlinks are removed from the article. I did that and found an interesting collection of articles in which the term “Physical Therapy” appeared.
My favorite was written by Jane E. Brody, after she apparently had a personal experience with Physical Therapy. Her article focused on “Good Therapy…”
“I have also learned a lot about how to judge the quality of physical therapy. As one reader, Tina Mosetis of Great Neck, N.Y., noted, “Most therapists do not spend enough time analyzing what is wrong with the patient, and after the initial session they simply direct the patient to do exercises on the gym equipment.”
While interesting, I think the most interesting fact returned by this exercise is that the results returned only 75 articles that included the term “Physical Therapy” since 1981. That same search for “Physician” returns 5,136 articles.
Perhaps what the New York Times thinks of Physical Therapy is that it doesn’t consider us very good promoters of our trade? And, if you haven’t yet noticed, the article pictured above that started this whole game was featured in the Fashion and Style section! What’s that about?