The future for postgraduate specialty clinical course work masters programs in Australia.

The first Editorial in the Australian Journal of Physiotherapy this year celebrated 100 years of physiotherapy education in Australia (Chipchase et al 2006). As was highlighted in this centenary Editorial, Australian physiotherapy has been privileged throughout the profession’s history to have leaders with foresight and vision at critical stages in its development. This is also true of the development of postgraduate education in physiotherapy, and at this time we can also celebrate a half century of postgraduate clinical education in Australia. The origin of this formal postgraduate education was the Certificate of Vertebral Manipulation offered initially by the South Australian Branch of the Australian Physiotherapy Association in 1965. Within the following decade there was a transfer of these programs to tertiary institutes. In 1974 the then South Australian Institute of Technology and the Western Australian Institute of Technology were the first to offer postgraduate diplomas in the field of manipulative therapy. Within the next two decades, programs grew and developed and clinical coursework masters programs in musculoskeletal/manipulative therapy were and are offered by physiotherapy schools in all states of Australia and New Zealand.