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K.E. Perez1
1University of the Philippines, Department of Physical Therapy, Manila, Philippines
Background: Professionalism has been a growing concern in physiotherapy education, affecting clinical skills and transition from classroom to clinics. Defined as the set of values and behaviours that guide practice, teaching professionalism is essential in preparing our students for an ethical and competent professional practice that observes the core values of the profession. However, clinical educators find remediating professionalism difficult due to its perceived subjective nature. Assessment instruments could aid in identifying and giving feedback on professionalism of students. Several such instruments have been developed and used in entry-level education programs for physiotherapy worldwide. No study has yet compiled and described these.
Purpose: This review aimed to determine the availability of validated instruments that assess professionalism of physiotherapy students and describe their structure and measurement properties.
Methods: Guided by the Arksey and O’Malley framework for scoping reviews, a search was used to identify instruments that measure professionalism for entry-level physiotherapy students in the clinics. Database (Scopus, CINAHL, EmBase, PsycINFO, PubMed, EBSCO, Medline, ERIC, and British Education Index) and reference lists of included studies were searched from November 1 to 27, 2019. Additional searching using the name of the instrument was done if measurement properties were not reported in the included article. Articles were considered if they developed, evaluated or used an assessment instrument to evaluate professionalism of physiotherapy students. Instruments were considered to assess professionalism if it was explicitly stated in the instrument itself. Articles were not considered if the instrument did not include use for entry-level physiotherapy students, if the instrument was not used in the clinical setting, if it didn’t solely assess professionalism, if full-text was not available, or if there was no English translation. Data that was extracted from articles were instrument’s structure, measurement properties, and educational use.
Results: The search resulted to nine articles with four instruments out of 840 records screened. The four instruments identified were Comprehensive Professional Behaviors Development Log, Professional Behaviors Assessment, Professionalism Assessment Tool, and Professionalism Physical Therapy Core Values Self-Assessment instrument. All four instruments were self-reported measures. Three instruments use rating scales based on frequency while one instrument uses a scale based on performance indicators. All showed multidimensionality in assessment. The common use of instruments also denotes longitudinal assessment of professionalism. Three out of four instruments had established internal consistency and construct validity, while one only reported content validity.
Conclusion(s): There is a limited number of instruments to assess professionalism of physiotherapy students in the clinics. These instruments are multidimensional and used longitudinally from pre-clinics to clinical practice. However, their validity in different contexts and use for multi-source assessments need to be further evaluated. It is recommended that future research focus on evaluating measurement properties and enhancing existing instruments to ensure validity in different settings and further guide students and educators in remediation of professional behaviors.
Implications: This review provides recommendations to improve professionalism assessment practice and research, and helps educators easily identify instruments for this purpose.
Funding, acknowledgements: The author was supported by the University of the Philippines Faculty, REPS and Administrative Staff Development Program.
Keywords: Professionalism, Physiotherapy, Assessment
Topic: Professionalism & ethics
Did this work require ethics approval? No
Institution: N/A
Committee: N/A
Reason: Ethics approval was not required because the research projet did not involve new data collection.
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
