Sundhedsfremme i Fysioterapeutuddannelsen

This thesis examines different ways through which ’the concept of health promotion’ is discussed and negotiated in physiotherapy education in Denmark, how it is practiced by the students and eventually how this influences their self-image regarding the future role as a health professional.
In a Danish context the way in which health promotion is practiced amongst health professionals has been criticized for focusing on individual responsibility and a physical understanding of health. To understand and explain why the field of health promotion practice maintains these understandings, this thesis focus on education as a context, where fundamental understandings and categorizations are established. Theoretically this thesis draws on a poststructuralistic framework supplemented with Bruners ideas of negotiation of meaning. Through a qualitative study, the thesis focuses on encounters between teachers and students of physiotherapy in the classroom, as well as on the subject positions taken by the students. Hereby the thesis analyses, a number of the ways through which ‘health promotion’ comes into being in the context of education. This thesis demonstrates that health promotion in the context of the physiotherapy education is connoted with physical training and preventing diseases, in such a way that healthy living is closely associated with following official health recommendations, and as a consequence the responsibility for healthy living is individualized.