As a Senior Physiotherapist: Why the ‘Dr’ and ‘PT’ Debate Matters to Our Profession

As a Senior Physiotherapist: Why the ‘Dr’ and ‘PT’ Debate Matters to Our Profession

As a physiotherapist who has spent years in this profession, I’ve witnessed our field evolve from being considered an “auxiliary service” to an essential branch of healthcare. Yet, despite our growth and impact, a persistent debate continues — whether physiotherapists should use the prefix “Dr” and suffix “PT.”

This issue has once again taken center stage following contradictory statements from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). Initially, physiotherapists were told not to use the “Dr” prefix, as it was deemed misleading under the Indian Medical Degrees Act of 1916. But within a week, this directive was rolled back for review. The result? Confusion and frustration among both practicing physiotherapists and aspiring students.

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Our Identity as Independent Health Professionals

Physiotherapy is not just about exercise or rehabilitation; it’s a comprehensive healthcare science that focuses on prevention, diagnosis, and evidence-based treatment of physical dysfunctions. Our training spans five rigorous years, including a full year of internship where we assess, plan, and treat patients independently.

When we use the prefix “Dr” and suffix “PT,” it is not to mislead anyone into believing we are medical doctors. Instead, it is a recognition of our clinical expertise and doctoral-level education in the science of human movement and rehabilitation.

The National Council for Allied Health Professions (NCAHP) has also emphasized that physiotherapists deserve to be acknowledged as autonomous healthcare providers. This recognition strengthens our professional identity and helps patients understand our scope of practice more clearly.

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Outdated Laws, Modern Realities

The DGHS’s earlier reference to the Indian Medical Degrees Act of 1916 feels misplaced in today’s context. That law was written more than a century ago, during colonial times, primarily to prevent quackery when medical systems were not formally regulated.

But healthcare today is multidisciplinary — it’s not limited to medicine and surgery alone. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dentistry, nursing, and psychology all function as independent professions, each contributing uniquely to patient care. Continuing to interpret century-old laws rigidly undermines the progress we’ve made as a modern healthcare system.

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Addressing Concerns About Misuse

I understand the concerns raised by some medical professionals — that the use of “Dr” might confuse patients or blur professional boundaries. However, the truth is that ethical physiotherapists never claim to be medical doctors. We always introduce ourselves clearly as “Dr. [Name], Physiotherapist” or “Dr. [Name], PT.”

Patients are smarter and more aware today. They appreciate transparency and are capable of distinguishing between a medical doctor and a doctor of physiotherapy. What matters to them is not the prefix, but the care, skill, and relief they receive.

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Why This Recognition Matters

For physiotherapists, this is not just about a title — it’s about respect and representation.
For too long, our profession has battled misconceptions and limited visibility. Allowing physiotherapists to use the “Dr (PT)” title provides a sense of professional dignity and helps bridge communication gaps in multidisciplinary teams. It also motivates young aspirants to take pride in choosing physiotherapy as a first-choice profession, not a backup option.

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Moving Forward

As professionals dedicated to restoring mobility, relieving pain, and improving quality of life, we deserve clarity — not confusion — about our professional identity. Whether or not the final verdict allows the use of “Dr” officially, what’s most important is that society recognizes physiotherapists as highly trained, independent, and essential healthcare providers.

Our work speaks for itself, every time a patient walks again, moves again, or lives again because of physiotherapy.

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Written by:
Dr. Vijay Guleria, PT
Senior Physiotherapist & Advocate for Professional Identity in Allied Health

GenAI Made Simple: 12 Easy Terms to Understand Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming part of our everyday lives from chatbots that talk like humans to tools that can write, draw, and code. But if all the tech words sound confusing, don’t worry!

Here’s a simple breakdown of 12 important GenAI (Generative AI) terms explained in plain English.

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🧠 1. What’s an LLM (Large Language Model)?

Think of an LLM as a super-smart robot that’s read tons of books, websites, and articles. It uses that knowledge to understand and create text that sounds natural like ChatGPT or Gemini.

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⚙️ 2. What are Transformers?

Transformers are the clever technology that helps AI understand language. They allow AI to notice the meaning and order of words which makes conversations sound more natural.

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💬 3. What is Prompt Engineering?

This means writing the right kind of question or instruction for AI. The better your prompt, the better the answer you’ll get. It’s like knowing how to ask a genie for the perfect wish!

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🔧 4. What is Fine-Tuning?

Fine-tuning is when we train an AI that already knows a lot to focus on one topic — like law, medicine, or marketing so it can perform even better in that field.

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🔢 5. What are Embeddings?

Embeddings turn words or pictures into numbers that AI can understand. This helps it figure out what things mean and how they relate like knowing that “cat” and “kitten” are similar.

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🔍 6. What is RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)?

RAG helps AI find real information from outside sources while it’s writing. This makes its answers more accurate and up to date.

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✂️ 7. What are Tokens?

AI reads and writes text in small pieces called tokens like words or chunks of words. How many tokens it can handle decides how long a conversation or document can be.

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🚨 8. What is an AI Hallucination?

Sometimes, AI makes things up that sound true but aren’t. That’s called a hallucination and it’s one of the biggest challenges in making AI more reliable.

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🧩 9. What is Zero-Shot Learning?

This is when AI figures out how to do something new even though it’s never been trained for it by using what it already knows. Pretty cool, right?

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🪜 10. What is Chain-of-Thought?

Chain-of-thought means the AI explains its reasoning step by step. This helps it solve complex problems and makes its answers easier to understand.

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📄 11. What is a Context Window?

A context window is how much text the AI can “remember” at once. The bigger it is, the more the AI can stay on topic during long chats or documents.

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🎨 12. What does Temperature Mean?

Temperature controls how creative or focused an AI’s answers are. A low temperature makes it give safe, factual replies. A high temperature makes it more imaginative and creative.

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🌟 Final Thoughts

AI might sound complicated, but once you know these basic terms, it’s a lot easier to understand how it works and how to use it. Whether you’re a student, creator, or business owner, learning these GenAI basics helps you get the most out of today’s smart tools.

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The Collective Sigh of Relief: Why the Non-Retroactive DPDP Act is a Lifeline for Indian Healthcare

The enactment of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, marked a monumental shift in India’s digital governance landscape. For many sectors, especially healthcare, the new law presented a unique challenge: what about the mountains of patient data digital and digitized collected over decades?

The uncertainty over whether the DPDP Act would apply retrospectively to this legacy data loomed large. A mandate to retroactively apply the law’s stringent requirements for consent, notice, and data governance to years of historical records would have translated into a compliance nightmare of unimaginable scale and cost.

The good news is now confirmed: The DPDP Act will not apply retrospectively. This single clarification from the government provides immense relief and allows India's healthcare sector to focus its efforts on protecting the future, rather than attempting to rewrite the past.

Understanding the DPDP Act’s Core Framework

The DPDP Act establishes a comprehensive framework for processing digital personal data. It clearly defines the roles and responsibilities essential to a modern, privacy-respecting digital economy:

 * Data Principal: The individual to whom the personal data relates (i.e., the patient). The Act grants them crucial rights over their data, including the right to access, correction, erasure, and grievance redressal.

 * Data Fiduciary: The person or entity (e.g., a hospital, clinic, or health-tech company) that determines the purpose and means of processing personal data. They bear the primary obligations under the Act.

 * Digital Personal Data: The Act applies to personal data collected in digital form or collected offline and subsequently digitized. For healthcare, this covers everything from electronic health records (EHRs) and scanned reports to insurance claims data.

The core principle for lawful processing is Consent, which must be free, specific, informed, unconditional, and unambiguous, given through a clear affirmative action.

Why Retroactivity Was the Healthcare Industry's Biggest Fear

The healthcare sector is uniquely burdened by data privacy legislation due to three critical factors:

 * Highly Sensitive Data: Health records are among the most sensitive categories of personal data, encompassing medical history, diagnoses, and genetic information. A breach here is far more damaging than a breach of general consumer data.

 * Long Retention Periods: Unlike retail data, medical and legal regulations often require healthcare providers to retain patient records for decades. A new DPDP-compliant consent for every one of those old records would be technically impossible and financially ruinous.

 * Complex Legacy Systems: Many established healthcare providers use older, fragmented, and highly complex IT systems. Overhauling these systems simply to retrospectively map old data to new compliance standards would divert essential resources from patient care and future security upgrades.

By confirming the non-retroactive application, the government has provided an operational and financial buffer, ensuring that compliance efforts can be efficiently directed towards new data streams and building secure, future-ready infrastructure. This is consistent with global privacy standards, like the EU’s GDPR, which typically focus on forward-looking compliance.

The Critical Distinction: Compliance vs. Security

While the clarification is a massive win for the industry, it's vital not to misunderstand the ruling. Non-retroactive application of the DPDP Act does not mean "Old Data is Safe to Forget."

The DPDP Act compliance obligations (like mandatory, new-format consent) do not apply to data collected before the Act's commencement. However, the existing and continuing security and ethical obligations remain fully in force.

Any healthcare provider that suffers a personal data breach involving older patient records will still face severe consequences under existing:

 * Negligence Laws: Failing to exercise reasonable care to protect data is a legal liability.

 * Contractual Obligations: Agreements with patients, partners, and vendors still require data protection.

 * Reputational Damage: The loss of patient trust resulting from a data breach can be catastrophic and often more costly than any fine.

The message is clear: You don't have to seek new consent for old data, but you absolutely must secure it.

The Strategic Way Forward: A Two-Pillar Compliance Plan

With the retroactive headache removed, healthcare organizations must implement a clear, two-pronged strategy to achieve robust compliance:

Pillar 1: Secure the Past (Legacy Data Management)

 * Data Inventory & Classification: Immediately categorize data into "Pre-DPDP" (historical records) and "Post-DPDP" (newly collected data). This clear delineation is the foundation of your compliance map.

 * Strengthen Security Perimeters: Apply high-level security measures like encryption, strict access control, and secure archiving protocols to all legacy records to mitigate breach risk.

 * Formalize Disposal Policies: Establish clear, auditable processes for the secure and irreversible erasure of old patient data once its legally mandated retention period expires.

Pillar 2: Build the Future (DPDP-Compliant Systems)

 * Re-Engineer Consent Mechanisms: Implement new, user-friendly mechanisms for obtaining free, specific, informed, and unambiguous consent from patients going forward, ensuring clear affirmative action.

 * Update Privacy Notices: The notice provided to the Data Principal must be crystal clear, detailing the exact purpose of processing and the manner in which the Data Principal can exercise their rights.

 * Invest in Governance: Appoint a dedicated Data Protection Officer (DPO), especially for larger organizations designated as Significant Data Fiduciaries, and conduct periodic Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) to proactively identify and manage risks in new processing activities.

By focusing their resources strategically on securing the past and building an iron-clad, transparent system for the future, India's healthcare sector can transform the challenge of the DPDP Act into an opportunity to set a new global standard for patient trust and data ethics.