This Perspective issues a challenge to physical therapists to re-orient physical therapist education in ways that directly address the crises of COVID-19 and systemic racism. We advocate that professional education obligates us to embrace the role of trusteeship that demands working to meet society’s needs by producing graduates who accept their social, and moral responsibilities as agents and advocates who act to improve health and health care. To achieve this, we must adopt a curriculum philosophy of social reconstruction and think more deeply about the why and how of learning. Currently, health professions education places strong emphasis on habits of head (cognitive knowledge) and hand (clinical skills), and less focus on habits of heart (professional formation). We believe that habits of heart are the essential foundations of the humanistic practice needed to address health inequities, find the moral courage to change the status quo, and address imbalances of power, privilege, and access. A social reconstruction orientation in physical therapist education not only places habits of heart at the center of curricula, it also requires intentional planning to create pathways into the profession for individuals from underrepresented groups. Adopting social reconstructionism begins with a faculty paradigm shift emphasizing the learning sciences, facilitating learning, metacognition, and development of a lifelong master adaptive learner. Achieving this vision depends not only on our ability to meet the physical therapy needs of persons with COVID-19 and its sequalae, but also on our collective courage to address injustice and systemic racism. It is imperative that the physical therapy community find the moral courage to act quickly and boldly to transform DPT education in ways that enable graduates to address the social determinants of health and their systemic and structural causes that result in health disparities. To succeed in this transformation, we are inspired and strengthened by the example set by Geneva R. Johnson, who has never wavered in recognizing the power of physical therapy to meet the needs of society.
Student debt in physical therapy has received increasing attention since 2016 when the House of Delegates unanimously passed RC 11–16 that charged the APTA Board of Directors to evaluate student debt in physical therapy and develop a plan to address it. Recently published studies of student loan debt in physical therapy have provided evidence supporting the concerns about increasing student debt. Return-on-investment (ROI) is defined as a ratio between net profit over a period of time and cost of an investment at a point in time. In higher education, however, ROI has traditionally consisted of a more complicated formulation of economic and non-economic factors benefitting both the individual and the public. The consideration of all factors (economic and non-economic, individual and social) in the evaluation of ROI becomes particularly important in the professions, given the autonomy society affords the professions and the responsibility the professions have to provide a greater social good. Understanding ROI from economic and non-economic perspectives at the individual level is critically important if the profession is to meet its responsibility to society and fulfill its vision. The profession also must investigate ROI from a systems-level that includes how physical therapy education is financed, what the actual costs are for that education, and what the economic and non-economic returns are for those investments.
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