Therefore, a single term may have a different meaning for different users and multiple terms may be used for a single concept. Several healthcare professions have standardised some technical terms internationally, including dentistry (World Dental Federation) and laboratory medicine (Forrey et al 1996). In medicine, the World Health Organisation developed the International Classification of Diseases, better known as ICD-10.

This system is valuable to many health professions including physiotherapy. However, this system does not always allow sufficient or relevant detail for physiotherapists to define some conditions. Furthermore, it only covers diagnoses and so does not include terms for therapeutic interventions, clinical assessment tools, educational qualifications, and other professional issues. The World Confederation of Physical Therapy (WCPT) has recently launched a glossary to encourage consistency this website in terminology within the profession. The initial edition of the glossary appears to be compiled from the definitions of terms in existing WCPT policy statements and therefore defines only about 170 terms. The terms span education (eg, curriculum, qualifications), professional issues (eg, autonomous practice, informed consent), and social issues Navitoclax (eg, disasters, human rights). Some areas of professional practice are also defined, such as community-based rehabilitation, and aged care. Very few clinical terms

are defined. However, the WCPT invites member organisations, regions, and subgroups

to suggest amendments and new terms for consideration for why inclusion. The WCPT states that the glossary is not intended to be an exhaustive list of terms used in physiotherapy. This is a reasonable caveat, given that large biomedical terminologies are usually the result of a team effort sustained over a long period (Bodenreider et al 2002). Nevertheless, the glossary could be a valuable opportunity for standardisation of terms used in physiotherapy assessment and intervention – particularly those that are known to be used inconsistently. Some groups of physiotherapists have previously worked to standardise such terms in a particular clinical area, eg, adverse events in orthopaedic physiotherapy (Carlesso et al 2010), and interventions used in airway clearance (IPG-CF 2009). These definitions would make ready contributions, helping to grow the glossary and giving the definitions wider exposure and endorsement for use internationally. Some clinical concepts are too complex to be covered adequately by brief text entries in a glossary. For example, extensive text can be required to explain even simple stretches (Nelson et al 2011) or resistance exercises (Ng et al 2010). More complex exercises may be more adequately defined pictorially (Harvey et al 2011). Some exercise regimens are so extensive that they must be described in an online appendix when reported in a published paper (Reeve et al 2010).