Physiotherapy and the science of recovery

For many people in Lebanon, physiotherapy enters the picture only after something has gone wrong: a sports injury, an operation, persistent back pain, a stroke, or the gradual loss of mobility that can come with age. That image, however, reflects only part of what the profession has become.

Today, physiotherapists work across hospitals, rehabilitation centers, private clinics, sports settings, schools and homes, treating injuries while helping patients recover function, manage chronic conditions, preserve mobility and remain independent. At the center of that work is a simple question: not only whether a patient is medically stable, but what that patient is still able to do.

That emphasis on function reflects a broader shift in global health. In a July 2026 brief, the World Health Organization argued that health is too often measured through mortality and morbidity, while giving less attention to whether people can function and participate in daily life.

WHO has called for functioning to be recognized as a third major dimension of population health. Around one in three people globally lives with a health condition that could benefit from rehabilitation, with demand expected to grow as populations age and chronic conditions become more common.

From rehabilitation to healthcare

Physiotherapy has been formally regulated in Lebanon since 1978, when Law No. 8/78 established the first legal framework for the profession.

Its academic development followed. In 1986, physiotherapy became a four-year university major at the Lebanese University following the restructuring of the Faculty of Public Health. A professional syndicate was established the following year, while a 1999 law regulated physiotherapy education within higher education institutions.

In 2001, the Syndicate for Lebanese Physiotherapists became the Order of Physiotherapists in Lebanon, with membership becoming mandatory. Further structures followed, including a national institute for continuing education in 2004 and research initiatives beginning in 2010. By 2016, Lebanese universities were graduating their first cohorts from Doctor of Physiotherapy programs.

The profession was becoming not only more regulated, but more specialized.

Dr. Charbel Rizk, manager of the Physical Therapy Department at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC), says physiotherapy is now firmly integrated into multidisciplinary medical care.

Physiotherapy has become a cornerstone of the medical approach to the patient.

In a hospital setting, he explains, the physiotherapist is part of the patient's treatment rather than someone who becomes involved only once the medical work is finished. Surgeons operate, nurses oversee clinical care, while physiotherapists work on rehabilitation, mobility and the recovery of function.

. Surgeons operate, nurses oversee clinical care, while physiotherapists work on rehabilitation, mobility and the recovery of function.

That can mean helping patients regain strength after surgery, improving breathing and movement after prolonged illness, or rebuilding balance and mobility after neurological injury.

We promote movement, and when you promote movement, you promote healing.

For elderly patients in particular, movement can become part of long-term care. A relatively short period of inactivity, he says, may lead to loss of balance, weakness and other complications.

“Regular physical therapy for an older patient can be like medication,” Dr. Rizk says.

It is a comparison that challenges one of the most persistent ideas surrounding the profession: that physiotherapy consists mainly of massage, machines or a fixed series of exercises.

Dr. Rizk stresses instead the clinical judgment involved in adapting rehabilitation to each patient.

“I am not a technician,” he says. If a patient cannot perform a particular movement, the physiotherapist has to reassess the situation, modify the exercise and find another way to work toward the same goal.

That shift has also made continuing education increasingly important. Physiotherapy has become an evidence-based profession in which treatments evolve as new research changes clinical understanding.

The evidence changes as new research comes out. Physiotherapists have to keep up.

When rehabilitation became impossible to ignore

Some of the clearest examples of physiotherapy's role in Lebanon emerged during moments of national crisis.

Dr. Rizk points to the COVID-19 pandemic, when patients recovering from severe illness often faced respiratory difficulties, muscle loss and profound physical weakness after long hospital stays.

“We worked on strengthening them, improving their breathing and rebuilding their function,” he says. “Many had lost significant muscle mass from prolonged hospitalization and infection.”

He describes COVID as one of the periods when the value of physiotherapy became especially visible.

The Beirut port explosion offered another stark example of how quickly rehabilitation can become essential. Physiotherapists worked with patients recovering from fractures, burns, surgery and other serious injuries, while similar needs have continued to emerge during periods of conflict.

With every war injury or bombing, the physiotherapist becomes an important part of rehabilitation.

That role is also reflected in recent World Health Organization guidance. In a July 2026 brief, WHO emphasized that rehabilitation during conflict is essential not only for fractures and amputations, but also for burns, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries and peripheral nerve damage, as well as for people whose existing disabilities or chronic conditions are disrupted by war. Early rehabilitation, it noted, can reduce complications, shorten hospital stays and improve long-term recovery.

Yet physiotherapy extends far beyond moments of crisis. Physiotherapists also work in schools, sports settings, private clinics and community care, addressing everything from posture and musculoskeletal problems to mobility, aging and post-surgical recovery.

At the same time, growing specialization has opened new paths in areas such as sports rehabilitation, geriatrics, pediatrics and post-surgical care.

Yet that expansion has come with a difficult contradiction: as the profession becomes broader and more specialized, the opportunities available to young physiotherapists in Lebanon have not necessarily grown at the same pace.

More graduates, fewer opportunities

Lebanon is producing more physiotherapy graduates than the labor market can absorb.

The demand is much lower than the number of people graduating.

The result is greater competition, pressure to specialize and, for some young physiotherapists, difficulty finding stable work. Economic conditions can also mean long hours and inadequate compensation, while the profession itself demands continuous investment in training.

Migration has become another consequence.

Many students and young professionals began looking abroad, particularly after Lebanon's economic crisis and the Beirut port explosion, even as opportunities outside the country have also become more competitive.

Yet one of the greatest challenges facing the profession is not economic or technological. It is preserving the human relationship at its center.

“Physical therapy is a human profession,” Dr. Rizk says. A physiotherapist may spend hours with a patient over the course of treatment, often accompanying that person through pain, fear, frustration and slow progress.

“The biggest challenge is that the physiotherapist can become overwhelmed and forget the human side of the profession,” he says. “Patients begin to be treated like machines or numbers.”

His message to future physiotherapists is therefore as much about character as it is about technical competence.

“Physiotherapy is not just hands-on work,” he says.

It is a profession in which you have to be human and you have to have empathy toward the people around you.

A profession that stays with you

Before becoming a news anchor at MTV Lebanon, Rita Pia Antoun studied physiotherapy, drawn initially by the human body and by the possibility of helping someone feel better through knowledge and care.

What stayed with her long after she moved into journalism was not only what she learned about the body.

Physiotherapy taught me something bigger: how important it is to understand people, not just their symptoms.

“Everyone responds differently, and that taught me patience, empathy and how to really listen,” Antoun says.

Her transition into journalism was not planned. She says she discovered a desire to communicate, ask questions and tell stories, eventually starting over in a field she had never formally studied.

Yet physiotherapy continued to shape the way she worked.

“You listen to the words, but you also pay attention to the person, the context and what may be left unsaid,” she says. “My first career still follows me into the studio.”

To Antoun, the two professions have more in common than their job descriptions suggest.

“At first glance, absolutely nothing. But in reality, both are about people,” she says. “In both, trust is everything.”

Her own career change also reflects one of the questions facing young physiotherapists in Lebanon today.

“We have incredibly talented young physiotherapists, but unfortunately, the opportunities and the financial conditions don’t always allow them to build the life they deserve in Lebanon,” she says.

The real challenge isn’t just convincing young people that physiotherapy is a great profession. It is giving them a reason to truly believe they can build a future with it here in Lebanon.

Antoun does not consider the years she spent studying physiotherapy a detour.

“I don’t believe that every decision has to lead directly to your final destination,” she says.

Physiotherapy gave me knowledge, discipline and a way of understanding people.

That understanding may ultimately say as much about the profession as any definition.

Physiotherapy deals with muscles, joints, breathing, balance and movement, but its outcome is measured in something more ordinary and more human: whether a person can return to work, walk without fear, live independently, care for themselves or regain a part of life that illness or injury had taken away.

It is in those small returns to everyday life that the profession’s impact is often felt most clearly.