In Tribute: Helen Hislop and Our Time of Progress

Helen Hislop, PT, PhD, ScD, FAPTA, died on November 13, 2013, at the age of 84. She was editor of PTJ from 1960 to 1968. During her tenure as editor, both the content of the Journal and its circulation more than doubled.

Hislop's editorials challenged us to embrace technology, enhance the scientific basis of our practice, become true academicians and professionals, and embrace clinical residencies. In her farewell as editor, she stated, “I simply reprise the simple but frequent theme of many of my past editorials: In an age of change, let our time be known as the time of progress.”¹

Hislop's career was devoted to creating change to lead us to “greatness as a profession.”² She won many awards and served as a member of APTA's Board of Directors from 1976 to 1982. Her Mary McMillan Lecture in 1975 is the most cited of the 44 lectures that have spanned almost 50 years. In that lecture, Hislop tells us that we have to establish standards of clinical performance, produce scholars, and elevate the role of the clinician. Her contemporary, Charles Magistro, PT, FAPTA, praises Hislop for her vision and her quick wit—and for never losing sight of her goal to elevate clinical practice.

Many have called her a visionary, but she was not only a visionary; she led by example.

Take a moment to consider the number of physical therapists you know from Hislop's generation who have a PhD and who conducted research relevant to the practice of physical therapy. When she was accepted into a PhD program at the University of Iowa in microbiology and found that her first semester was filled with math courses, she walked across campus to the physical therapy program, was accepted without applying, and began classes that afternoon. That day, she made a very good decision for our profession. After working in the clinic and gaining some teaching experience, Hislop completed her PhD in physiology at the University of Iowa a few years later.

Of her 39 publications cited in PubMed, the earliest listing is “Evaluation of the Extension of the Hip.”³ This interest in human movement led her to develop the term “biokinesiology,” which she defined as the interplay between molecular and cellular biology of muscles, bones, and joints and how that interplay influences the mechanical and behavioral aspects of movement. Her research embodied the term “biokinesiology” and included examining the metabolic cost of walking in people who were able bodied across the life span and in people with a variety of medical diagnoses. She also examined the influence of the environment on movement, described relationships among muscles used to produce torque, and developed principles for bracing with her colleagues. She led our field in conducting interdisciplinary research; her collaborators included a vast number of physical therapist colleagues and students, Jacquelin Perry and other orthopedic surgeons, and engineers.

Hislop was frustrated that physical therapists interested in advanced study had to enroll in non–physical therapy education programs. In a PTJ editorial in 1968 she stated, “If we do not develop scientists of our own, we will continue to have the characteristics of mental pick pockets, whereby we do nothing but draw as parasites on the ideas originating from other disciplines.”^4(p1325) So, she developed a PhD program in biokinesiology at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1978. In an editorial she wrote in 1968, she contended that “the student must be taught to distinguish between fad, fallacy, fancy, fiction and fact in both clinical and scientific matters…the student must be taught to think, and sometimes it is difficult to make people think on a rational basis.”⁵ Again, she implemented her vision. During her 23-year tenure (1975–1998) as chair at the USC department of physical therapy, she redesigned the curriculum to emphasize evidence-based learning, expanded students' time in clinical education, and developed clinical specialization well before these concepts were common in our profession.

Every physical therapist student in the United States learns the skill of manual muscle testing using 1 of 2 textbooks.^6,7 Hislop assumed authorship of Daniels and Worthingham's Muscle Testing (and Florence Kendall published Muscles, Testing and Function). The ninth edition of Hislop's book was published last year with 4 new chapters, and it has been translated in French, German, and Spanish. In honor of this textbook, her writing talent, and her many other contributions to the professional literature, APTA created the Helen J. Hislop Award for Outstanding Contributions to Professional Literature in 1991.

I was privileged to know Helen and enjoyed our conversations. During a meeting with her in the 1990s, she asked Carolee Winstein, PT, PhD, FAPTA, and me to help her develop a list of physical therapist scientists and their fields of study to assure her that the profession was producing the type of scholars that we needed. I had read many of her publications but was not prepared for her intensity, her candor, or her wonderful sense of humor. Dr Hislop, thank you for your deep contributions to our profession. You helped to put us on the path of “greatness,” and you will be missed.

• © 2014 American Physical Therapy Association