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Kirsch N.1, Tunpattu S.2, Nassib T.N.3, Shinkfield P.4, Buckley E.5
1Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, Rehabilitation and Movement Sciences, Newark, United States, 2National Hospital of Sri Lanka, Physiotherapy, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Sri Lanka, 3Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, Department of Physiotherapy, Juja, Kenya, 4Tasmanian Health Pathways, Health Pathways Project, Hobart, Australia, 5Sheffield Hallam University, Health Professions Council, Sheffield, United Kingdom
Background: Professionalism is the public expectation of the behavior of physical therapists caring for them. In return for the behaviors expected of a professional, the profession is permitted to regulate itself to ensure safe and effective care. This regulation is often a mix of professional standards such as Codes of Ethics and mandates such as laws and regulations. The behaviors of professionals are guided by both the aspirations of ethics and the requirements of law. It was determined that much could be learned from how ethics and regulation intersect and protect patients in different regions of the world. At the same time the common theme of ensuring professional responsibility and respect was investigated from the five different countries within the context of the different health care delivery systems.
Purpose: Professionalism is a critical element of practice. The purpose of this investigation was to look at professional, ethical and regulatory guidance in the different nations to determine if there was any change in health care delivery as a result of differences in either regulation or ethical guidance.
Methods: For each country the regulations were reviewed as they related to professional behaviors. The Code of ethics or equivalent document were also reviewed. Within country they were analyzed based on professionalism criteria and then they were compared based on the same criteria with one another.
Results: Professionalism is defined differently by regulation and professional code between countries but many of the defined professional characteristics were met in very similar ways.
Conclusion(s): Regulations/laws set the floor for professional behavior and codes of ethics set what professionals are expected to aspire to. There should be some type of a relationship between them and it was found to be the case in most of the countries. Some of the countries in which ethical guidance is relatively new did not have experience looking at the professional issues.
Implications: To ensure professionalism there is much to be gained looking at the role of regulation and ethical guidance. A between country analysis was examined superficially and it may be beneficial to examine this relationship in greater depth.
Funding acknowledgements: No funding was provided
Topic: Professional issues
Ethics approval: Was an analysis of professional documents. No ethics committee oversight was necessary
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
