Intersecting perceptions: a Foucauldian study of mobility disability representations in clinical encounters from physiotherapists’ perspectives
Bibliographic record
Abstract
While patient-doctor interactions have been extensively studied, how interactions during rehabilitation influence individuals’ self-concept—particularly through the subtle reproduction of disability-related stereotypes—has received less attention. This subtle mechanism is often shaped by representations of disability framed through a biomedical or mechanistic lens (e.g., the body as a machine), which can reinforce negative assumptions and dominant discourses about clients with mobility disability. This study seeks to examine the interactional dynamics between clients and the combined entity of healthcare professionals and medical systems, emphasizing representations that contribute to the construction of clients’ experiences and self-concepts during rehabilitation. Using representation theories and Foucauldian medical discourse as our framework, we conducted in-depth interviews with 12 experienced physiotherapists, acting as intermediaries between clients and other healthcare professionals and systems. The transcripts were analyzed through a six-phased inductive thematic analysis framework. In the results, three themes were identified: (I) The Complex Medical System, But Reliable Physiotherapy Clinic; (II) A Knowledge-Language Differential in Healthcare Professionals-Clients Talks; and (III) Iconic Representations: Practical Use vs. Perceived Stigma. Each theme was supported by relevant quotes. While dominant stereotypes surrounding disability persist across the rehabilitation steps, physiotherapists’ inclusive approaches were differentiated in themes I and II. However, healthcare professionals involved in rehabilitation, including physiotherapists, still reproduce the perception of the body as a machine. The themes identified are not limited to interactions within rehabilitation settings but also extend into wider public discourse, influencing societal perceptions of mobility impairments. Future research should prioritize co-produced approaches that center lived experiences to challenge dominant representations and promote inclusive rehabilitation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".