Zafer Altunbezel, a physiotherapy manager and trainer with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), teaches four Physiopedia Plus (Plus) courses that bring his frontline humanitarian experience to rehabilitation professionals around the world. When he responded to a training call shared with Plus instructors earlier this year, it led to a new collaboration and showed how joining the instructor community can open doors you might not expect.
Physiopedia Plus (Plus) instructor Zafer Altunbezel is a physiotherapy manager and trainer with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and his work sits at the sharp end of humanitarian rehabilitation. He has worked as a field physiotherapist for leading international humanitarian organisations across the Middle East, with a focus that spans the early rehabilitation of blast and gunshot injuries and the interdisciplinary rehabilitation of survivors of war and torture, and he is currently based in Syria. His particular interest is the biopsychosocial management of chronic pain in people who have experienced trauma, an area he explored in his master’s research into the factors behind central sensitisation in traumatised refugees living with chronic pain. He teaches four courses on Plus that have together reached more than 2,500 participants, bringing that expertise directly to clinicians who may never work in such settings themselves.
On Plus, Zafer teaches Evidence-Based Pain Assessment for Displaced Persons, Evidence-Based Management of Pain for Displaced Persons, Introduction to Gunshot Injury Rehabilitation and Gunshot Injuries Assessment and Treatment Considerations. Between them the courses cover pain assessment and management for displaced persons and the assessment, treatment and rehabilitation of gunshot injuries, topics that reflect the realities of conflict-affected settings and can be hard to learn about anywhere else. For rehabilitation professionals who want to understand this work, whether or not they ever practise in such settings, the courses offer knowledge drawn straight from the field.
His most recent collaboration began with a simple response to an opportunity. Earlier this year, a call for onsite training support was shared with Plus instructors on behalf of CURE International, an organisation providing surgical care and rehabilitation to children with treatable disabilities. Zafer contacted Christine Tusiieme, Director of Rehabilitation Services at CURE, and over the following months that contact grew into an online training session on rapid neurological screening following paediatric reconstructive surgery. The one-hour session focused on making complex neurological concepts practical and usable in post-operative settings, and both teams came away having identified new areas of learning in orthopaedic rehabilitation. With Zafer based in Syria the collaboration is online for now, though there are hopes of face-to-face events in future, and he is already planning to turn the session’s content into a Physiopedia article to share with the wider rehabilitation community.
“I wanted to thank Physiopedia for bringing us together, and I’m very open to supporting similar initiatives in future.”
Zafer is now putting the same energy into his work in Syria, where he is training Syrian physiotherapists to support survivors of torture alongside the Syrian Physical Therapy Association. More than 80 physiotherapists have already taken part in an initial awareness session, with further training planned, and the response so far reflects a clear need for this expertise.
Zafer’s story is a reminder that becoming an instructor is about more than delivering a course. It is a way to share hard-won expertise, reach thousands of colleagues you would never otherwise meet and open the door to collaborations you cannot predict. Every instructor comes to Plus with something different to offer, and every course adds to a growing library of practical, evidence-informed learning for the global rehabilitation community. Contact us if you are interested in joining our instructor team.
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