Transforming Pediatric Physiotherapy: The Role of ChatGPT in Therapy, Limitations, and Ethical Considerations

The use of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT in pediatric physiotherapy, is a big step forward in the provision of tailored care, clinical decision-making, and caregiver education. This narrative review examines ChatGPT's roles in improving physiotherapy practice across three major domains: (1) clinical reasoning, (2) tailored therapeutic recommendations, and (3) caregiver engagement. Drawing on recent empirical and theoretical literature, the paper discusses ChatGPT's ability to generate context-aware, developmentally appropriate content, its limits in transparency, factual correctness, and relational interactivity. Key ethical challenges are examined, including algorithmic bias, data privacy, medico-legal responsibility, and the risk of diminishing humanistic aspects of care. While ChatGPT holds promise as a supplementary tool to support evidence-based rehabilitation, particularly in under-resourced or home-based settings, its effective implementation requires ongoing human oversight, robust validation, and clinician training. The paper concludes with practical recommendations and ethical safeguards for responsible integration, emphasizing that ChatGPT should augment, not replace, human clinical expertise in pediatric rehabilitation contexts.