Physiotherapy and Power Fisioterapia y Poder An Approach to Disciplinarization, Standardization, and Commodification in the Medical-Industrial-Financial Complex. narrative review of the literature.

Abstract

Introduction: Physiotherapy, as a discipline and profession, has historically been configured within a network of power relations that articulate clinical practices, biomedical discourses, and economic rationalities. In this context, tensions emerge between the therapeutic function and the processes of social control, standardization, and commodification of care. Objective: To critically explore, through a narrative review of the literature, how physiotherapy has been shaped by power dynamics that insert it into processes of disciplining, standardization, and commodification within the medical-industrial and financial complex, as well as its implications for professional autonomy and person-centered care. Methods: A critical narrative review of academic literature, normative documents, and theoretical frameworks of biopolitics, power, and medicalization was conducted. The analysis focused on identifying conceptual categories and discursive patterns that highlight the interaction between physiotherapy and power structures in contemporary healthcare. Results: Four axes were identified: disciplining, expressed in the consolidation of knowledge and practices that normalize the body and the profession; standardization, materialized in guidelines, protocols, and indicators that reorient practice toward standardized efficiency; commodification, which transforms therapeutic procedures into units of productivity and profitability; and the integration of these processes into the medical-industrial-financial complex, which subordinates care to economic ends. Conclusions. Physiotherapy, far from being a neutral practice, is influenced by power dynamics that limit its autonomy and condition its practice toward productivist objectives. There is a need to critically rethink the training, practice, and social role of physiotherapists, guiding them toward an emancipatory project committed to equity and social transformation.