Jäppinen A.-M.1,2, Jääskeläinen E.1, Kleovoulou M.1, Piirainen A.1
1University of Jyvaskyla, Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, Jyväskylä, Finland, 2Helsinki University Hospital, Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation, Helsinki, Finland
Background: Physiotherapists' self-assessed competence evaluate and support the professional development. The main purpose of self-assessment is to develop professional competence throughout working career and through this ensure the quality of physiotherapy to patients and enable physiotherapists' career advancement. Studies about physiotherapists' core competences has been done, but it is still understudied area.
Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate physiotherapist's competence in acute hospital district in Finland through self-assessment. The aim was to explore how age, gender, degrees, work experience and permanent employment affected this assessment.
Methods: In this survey-study physiotherapists self-assessment (N=200) was done by an internet based questionnaire in 2015. The competences were assessed through a separate instrument (©Jäppinen, Laurila, Ojala, Rajantie) developed in this hospital district and it includes five main core competence areas and totally 38 claims. For each claim of competence, the respondent specify her level of agreement to a claim by indicating a position along a continuous line (100 mm long) between two end-points (visual analogue scale). And after each claim there is a separate question about frequency of using this competence, how often this task occurs at work.
Results: The questionnaire was answered by 73 % (n=146) physiotherapists. Mean overall competence was 75/100. The highest competence area was engagement in the development process of the physiotherapy unit 83/100 and lowest development of competence utilizing evidence based practice 66/100. Physiotherapy in the patient rehabilitation was 82/100, communication skills 75/100 and teaching and tutoring was 70/100.
Age (r=0,203, p 0,05) and work experience as a physiotherapist (r=0,285, p 0,01) correlated with teaching and tutoring. Degrees correlated with development of competence utilizing evidence based practice (r =0,212, p 0,05).The level of competence was related in how often this task occurred at work.
Conclusion(s): Physiotherapists considered their overall competence in a high level. Through self-assessment physiotherapists can recognize their professional competence and find out areas need to be developed. According to the results older physiotherapists with longer work experience evaluated their teaching and tutoring skills higher than younger ones. Physiotherapists with higher education degree considered themselves more competent utilizing evidence based practice.
Implications: Physiotherapist self-assessment questionnaire can be used as a part of competence evaluation and it gives subjective information of the competencies. Peer and manager assessment would expand perspective of evaluation.
Funding acknowledgements: No funding
Topic: Education: continuing professional development
Ethics approval: No ethics approval wad demanded. Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa approved this study.
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
