Toni has been a Practitioner Member of the Physiotherapy Council of NSW since 2017. He is the current Deputy President and chairs one of the complaints and notification committees. Toni is also an active member of the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) and has served on a number of committees. He previously chaired the APA’s National Professional Standards Panel and is a member of the Australian Physiotherapy Council’s accreditation committee.

Toni is a knowledgeable professional, having worked in public, private, education and governance roles.

The Physiotherapy Council of NSW posed the following questions to Toni:

Can you tell us a bit about your day job?

I work part time as a clinical lead/senior musculoskeletal physiotherapist at a large tertiary referral and teaching hospital. I am a director of a health-based consultancy business. I usually teach Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy one day a week at the University of Sydney but am not teaching this semester because I couldn’t fit it in.

What is it about your day job that you love the most?

I love the clinical reasoning involved with treating patients, picking up and addressing issues that have been missed or not addressed properly in the past. I am passionate about enabling patients to take control of their rehab and self manage their condition.

Who has been the strongest influences in your career?

I have had a couple of fantastic people influence my career. My first ever manager was amazing at opening my eyes to wider possibilities and providing me with opportunities to be involved with projects that were both interesting and beneficial for my own career development.

I have also benefited from having a wonderful clinical mentor who is an expert clinician and a fantastic teacher as well. He taught me to be more systematic with my assessments and clinical reasoning processes.

Overall I have been very lucky to have these two amazing people influence my career.

What attracted you to working in the regulatory area?

I have always been interested in the ethical side of our work. My previous role with the APA meant I was hearing about where things had gone wrong. This meant I was always looking at ways to try and educate/support physiotherapists to make sure we were doing the right thing. From that role I learnt about the work of the Council and became an external committee member. I was involved with one tribunal as a senior member and I was hooked. The next time a vacancy came up I applied and was successful.

What preconceived ideas did you have about the Council before you joined versus what you know now?

I must confess that I didn’t really understand the work of the Council before I joined. I did have the (wrong) idea that people were losing their right to practice and having restrictions placed on their practice more often than is the case. In fact, physios are extremely well behaved and have a complaint rate that is one sixth the rate of similar professions.

You have a heavy load between your day job and Council responsibilities. How do you remain resilient?

I try and make sure that I am not overbooked. I am fortunate that in my professional life, I get variety every week. This means that when I am working clinically, I am enthusiastic to see my patients. Same goes for my teaching and committee work- the diversity keeps me fresh. I am not sure how resilient I would be with a consistent caseload of seeing patients for eight hours per day, five days per week for 50 or so weeks a year.