CRISIS IN THE COMMUNITY: THE IMPACT OF PROTEST AND THE PANDEMIC IN PHYSICAL THERAPY

D. Hall-Bibb¹, M. Danzl¹, L. Kerr¹, E. Ulanowski¹

¹Bellarmine University, Physical Therapy, Louisville, United States

Background: As World Physiotherapy members, we are invested in the health and wellbeing of our communities. Globally, communities faced prominent challenges for the past several years given social unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic. As a specific example, Louisville, Kentucky (United States) was center stage for 2 world shattering events in 2020, the pandemic and the social unrest centered around the extrajudicial killings of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee. While protest and the pandemic were on the rise, no one anticipated the gripping impact of the collision of these events on the mental health of physical therapy students and faculty.

Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is 1) to review the literature on the effects of the pandemic and social unrest on the physical therapy community and 2) describe a case exemplar from a physical therapy educational program to meet the needs of students and foster civic-mindedness during turbulent times in the community.

Methods: A review of the literature was conducted (databases: Medline, CINAHL, ERIC; sample key words: physiotherapy, social unrest, civic mindedness, social responsibility). Additionally, the case description involves a physical therapy program in Louisville in 2020. Examples of strategies utilized to support students, address mental health concerns, and cultivate civic-mindedness included recommendations to literature, resources, and movies to better understand the crisis, opportunities to dialogue about distractions from learning and angst about living in the city, and virtual meetings for faculty and students to decompress, share, explain, educate, and counsel students.

Results: A review of the literature provides global examples such as narrative histories from physiotherapists in Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador highlighting the effects of social unrest and trauma, military rule, and economic instability on the profession. The literature also supports the development of civic-mindedness to improve empathy, lower burnout, improve compassion satisfaction, and protect against developing compassion fatigue. Student feedback from the strategies in this case included gratitude for opportunities to speak freely about experiences without judgment, to broaden understanding of the role of physical therapy as related to social responsibility, integrity, duty, and compassion/caring, to learn about acts of racism and omission of those in history in order to understand injustices, and to provide and receive emotional support.

Conclusions: By offering students and faculty a “safe” opportunity to be honest about personal thoughts and experiences without judgement, students were able to grow in understanding the depth and breadth of discrimination in the United States, become better active listeners, refrain from quick judgement of others, seek greater understanding of a situation before rendering their opinion, and enhance perspectives of health disparities and the role of physical therapy to aid in diminishing those gaps.

Implications: There are lessons to be drawn from the literature and this case example about the impact of community turmoil on our profession and means to support students during social unrest and the pandemic, foster civic mindedness, and promulgate the role of social responsibility in physical therapy to decrease health disparities and offer support to communities.

Funding acknowledgements: Not applicable.

Keywords:
Civic mindedness
Social responsibility

Topics:
Professional issues
Education

Did this work require ethics approval? No

Reason: This work includes a narrative review of the literature and describes a unique development in education.