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I took a phone call from a friend this month. She’s been called up for HCPC audit and we both run very similar sole practitioner clinics.

A great deal of my replies to her questions about whether I had x, y or z policy in place were “erm… no?” Sure, I have consent forms for patients and a plan in place for the patient who comes in with unexplained bladder retention and bilateral leg pain… but you want to see my non-clinical policies? Written down? Give me 2–3 working days and I’ll, um, unearth them.

My friend was dubious about this. For some reason - and perhaps it’s because we’re all encouraged to project this image - she presumed I was running the perfect clinic. Policy after policy filed alphabetically in a folder, always to hand. We have so much in common, but this folder - and my apparent drive to have created and maintained it - is our great divider.

This folder does not exist.

Somewhat related, I am currently reading a book called Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. Klein is a journalist and documentary-maker and also wrote the excellent Shock Doctrine about how governments use fear within populations. Klein is frequently confused online with another Naomi - Naomi Wolf - who has built a name and reputation as a conspiracy theorist and mass spreader of misinformation. It is - and I am merely paraphrasing Klein here - not ideal.

In MSK, we all have our doppelgängers. Sometimes they look like us - only much, much better. And sometimes they’re just like us, only clearly getting it wrong. They rely too heavily on manual therapy, whereas we are, of course, more enlightened. Or perhaps they’re a totally hands-off maniac, while we sit comfortably in the skilled middle.

Klein uses the example of her dog, Smoke, catching a glimpse of himself in a glass door and barking ferociously. ‘And this is the catch-22 of confronting your doppelganger’, writes Klein. ‘Bark all you want, but you inevitably end up confronting yourself’.

This month’s MSKMag is full of these reflections: versions of us, past and present, held up for critique.

Our new feature looks exactly like us…only from 2014. We hold The Physio Matters Podcast Episode 10 featuring Ann Gates speaking on exercise promotion to scrutiny to see if the messages still hold true. Check it out in Core Memories.

If you’ve ever been on a ski forum online and thought wow, that sounds like Orthopaedic surgeon Jonathan Bell giving advice! It wasn’t his doppelganger, it was him. And he’s back to talk about expertise and why the more of it he gathers, the less he’s reaching for the scalpel. Read all about it in ‘What is Expertise?’

If you can’t tell one dynamometer apart from the next, Claire Minshull’s piece ‘The Best Dynamometer for Clinical Practice’ and her associated new website is for you.

If you’ve ever thought that physiotherapy graduates should look a little less identical and a whole lot more specialised from the off, Jeff Morton is putting forward his case for MSK to be a separate degree in ‘Trained to Struggle’.

Katie Knapton has been to two conferences of late, covering digital transformation in the NHS and investment - but while the conference themes might have looked comparable, there was one vital thing missing. Find out what in ‘Industrialised Rehabilitation’.

And if you’re envious of your doppelganger who just sold their clinic, check out our article by Verilo’s Joshua Catlett ‘How To Build Something Worth Selling’.

Whether it’s our past ideas, our professional identity, or the clinics we build, we’re not really arguing with something new. Just a version of ourselves we’d rather not see too clearly.