970), that would allow physical therapists to participate in a student loan payment program if they practice in rural or underserved areas. The survey was then administered by APTA through the Formsite.com website. Following the adoption of the URM definition, the DTF undertook the second part of its charge: to affirm a rationale for promoting a diverse PT student population. Thank you so much for touching this topic. RC 11-17: Diversity in Physical Therapy? - PT Think Tank One of the best paths to lasting change within the industry involves recruiting more racially diverse students to the physical therapy profession. Ruggie practiced in various clinical settings including acute care, in-patient rehabilitation, nursing home and long-term care, and in-school pediatrics. 1. Dillon LS, Tomaka J. NPTE predictors in a Hispanic-serving institution's physical therapist education program. The American Journal of Surgery. Inter-rater reliability was achieved (kappa, 0.922) for axial coding using a random 25% of the sample before each reviewer engaged in coding the full data set. Recruiting students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds, especially students of color, should remain a priority to reflect the growing diversity of the United States population. Outreach to Black communities may help to improve the dialogue between physical therapists (a profession made up of mostly white people) and people of color. The answer likely has many variables and may include factors related to trust in the healthcare system, systemic racial bias among healthcare practitioners, and insurance coverage (or lack thereof) in certain populations. Dr. Heidi Jannenga, PT, DPT, ATC, is the founder of the Rizing Tide Foundation and co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of WebPT. Phys Ther. The lack of funding for a DPT education is a key . Over the years, Ive seen my white counterparts not understand, or misinterpret communication from AAs and other minorities because of a lack of cultural understandings. In summary: Data on disadvantaged backgrounds have not been routinely collected by PT education programs or by the PT profession. Racial diversity in the rehab therapy industry. Hispanic and disadvantaged students reported accessing a health professions or career advisor with higher frequency than other groups, and Hispanic and nonwhite students were less likely to utilize a pre-PT club for career information than other students. Oregon has four statutes, one executive order, and one governing initiative that all compelled the board to examine its diversity. And it does not matter which setting the referral is made to. We propose that identifying potential differences in how URM students achieve this decision will support the development of recruitment strategies to specifically target URM groups. From PT in Motion Magazine: Diversifying the Profession | APTA Potential issues include: Lack of knowledge about the client's culture - A client may wish to talk about attitudes, customs or cultural references which are unfamiliar to the therapist. Despite the many challenges to achieving diverse representation, board members need to address this issue now. We currently have a bill on the table, The Physical Therapist Workforce and Patient Access Act (H.R. I truly believe we need to diversify the field to be able to push the field of physical therapy forward. ), who was not involved in the development of the codes, cross-checked the coding scheme by using it to code 30 randomly assigned survey responses. Orchestra hopefuls would perform their audition pieces behind a screen in an effort to avoid bias. FSBPT has also been examining this for quite some time. A 2016 study published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities found that about 8% of Americans with self-reported arthritis have at least one in-office PT visit each year. 3) More URM students reported making their career decisions in the 2126 year age range than non-URM students. The University of Delaware Advancing Diversity in Physical Therapy (ADaPT) program is creating a more inclusive and representative generation of PT students who are equipped to practice in an increasingly diverse world. She practiced in a variety of settings including in-patient rehabilitation, acute care, long-term care, and home care. Research indicates that, in some cases, Black Americans suffer from worse rehabilitation outcomes when compared to white, non-Hispanic counterparts. She served the New Jersey Chapter as Secretary and President, and as a delegate and chief delegate to the House of Delegates. However, the orchestra still hired men, overwhelmingly so. While this may have been a function of the small sample captured with the survey, this finding warrants further investigation and lends itself to the question of whether second career or returning adults from URM backgrounds may be an untapped population in the effort to increase the diversity of the work force. The COVID-19 healthcare pandemic has seen a disproportionate number of Black citizens become infected and severely ill. People of color suffer worse outcomes from cardiovascular disease and diabetes management. She served the New Jersey Chapter as Secretary and President, and as a delegate and chief delegate to the House of Delegates. The Importance of Diversity in Counselling and Therapy Zoher Kapasi is the director and professor of the Division of Physical Therapy, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Emory University. Pipeline programs in the health professions, part 1: Preserving diversity and reducing health disparities. Am J Prev Cardiol. Requiring a cultural competency credit in continuing education credits (as of April 2020), Evaluating licensing criteria for foreign-trained/immigrant populations, Implementing diversity and inclusion training for PT board members to facilitate board awareness and create the proper lens for policymaking, Planning to collaborate with educational communities to ensure a diversified pipeline of professionalsmore specifically, the board is exploring creating outreach programs to middle and high school students, Looking into expanding the diversity of the board via public member appointments to offset the relative lack of diversity in the profession. Bottlenecks Toward Diversity. These shortcuts rely on intuition and generalizations, and they often bypass objectivity. Although studies have examined factors predictive of graduation and licensure success of PT students including URMs, these studies have not specifically explored the extent to which diversity factors impact student recruitment.7-14, Three common initiatives to support the successful recruitment of URM students across medicine, dentistry, nursing, and pharmacy include student mentorship, pipelines, and enhancement programs. Phys Ther. This position paper reports on a survey conducted by the American Council of Academic Physical Therapy's Diversity Task Force designed to examine recruitment into PT education through the lens of the new URM definition, with a focus on how students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds decide to pursue a PT career. Promoting diversity: Recommendations for. Given that disadvantaged backgrounds were more common among students of color, such clubs or student organizations would potentially reach this less visible demographic. There are plenty of resources available to those who wish to learnfrom . The axial codes were then grouped into core concepts or selective codes to broadly capture the factors that influence students' decisions to pursue a career in physical therapy. Equality and Diversity Counselling Tutor When examined by ethnicity, race, and disadvantage (Table 3), slight differences were noted for Hispanic, nonwhite, and disadvantaged students. Underrepresented minority students reported high use of online resources and lower use of advisors and faculty in obtaining information about the profession and about preparing to apply to professional graduate education programs. Of course, we cannot simply wait until today's middle school students become tomorrow's board members. If we want to make a serious effort to diversify our profession, one of the most important steps will be making physical therapy education more accessible to more people. Boards also must look at research and data to see if sanctions are harsher for minorities. This failure to access post-discharge rehab services may lead to poorer functional outcomes, which are often seen in the Black population. Recruitment strategies should target the areas captured by the open codes related to values + interests that emerged from the survey data (Table 7). Of course, this lack of care may lead to poorer functional outcomes. She has been involved with the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy as a member of the FSBPT Membership Survey Task Force, a member of the FSBPT Resolutions Committee, the Chair of the FSBPT Re-entry to Practice Task Force, and a recipient of the FSBPT Outstanding Service Award in 2018. One study found that after inpatient rehabilitation for hip fracture, Black Americans had a longer length of stay, worse functional scores on the Functional Independence Measure, and were more likely to be discharged home rather than continue their rehab in a sub-acute rehab facility. When variables like insurance, income, and education level are corrected, however, only the Black population continued with reduced odds of a therapy visit. Students who identified as white (alone or in combination with other categories) responded to the survey more than any other group; compared to white respondents, only 11.91% of respondents represented all other racial categories, alone or in combination. We further examined this relationship using the relative frequencies of the axial codes per selective code across the three groups (Figure 2). Recently, the Oregon Board of Physical Therapy sought to increase its diversity. Take a look at this table: It compares data from the US census, our 2019 industry survey, and the APTAs survey of its member demographics. 9) Both nonwhite and disadvantaged students were influenced by values and interests, the patienttherapist relationship, and by inclusion and diversity; inclusion and diversity, in contrast, was barely identified by white students. So do patients experience different outcomes from PT and rehab due to a referral problem? Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's Web site (www.aptaeducation.org). Required fields are marked *. That is to say, there is no diversity. 2010;199(3):348-353. doi:10.1016/j.amjsurg.2009.09.021. CDC COVID-19 response health equity strategy: Accelerating progress towards reducing COVID-19 disparities and achieving health equity. Andrews A, Johansson C, Chinworth S, Akroyd D. Cognitive, collegiate, and demographic predictors of attrition in professional physical therapist education. Salome Brooks is an associate professor of physical therapy, Department of Physical Therapy, School of Health Sciences at Springfield College. Physical Therapy & Sexual Misconduct: What You Need to Know, Caring for a Loved One After Total Joint Replacement Surgery, Breast Cancer Treatment Barriers for Black Women, Mastectomy and Breast Reconstruction: Considerations for Black Patients, Benefits and Considerations for In-Home Physical Therapy, Breast Cancer Risk: Disparities That Affect Black Women, Physical Therapy for a Pectoralis Major Tear, Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Exist in Every State, Report Finds, The Intergenerational Impact of Racism on Health, Type 2 Diabetes Management Barriers in People of Color, Physical Therapy for Post-Intensive Care Syndrome, Key facts on health and healthcare by race and ethnicity, Disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic: A clarion call for preventive cardiology, Rehabilitation services use and patient-reported outcomes among older adults in the United States, Race/ethnicity and outcomes following inpatient rehabilitation for hip fracture, Follow-up disparities after trauma: A real problem for outcomes research, Institutional racism in the health care system, Racism, inequality, and health care for African Americans, Disparities in access to outpatient rehabilitation therapy for African Americans with arthritis, CDC COVID-19 response health equity strategy: Accelerating progress towards reducing COVID-19 disparities and achieving health equity, Lack of availability of outpatient physical therapists who can meet the needs of Black Americans, Location of PT offices may affect accessibility for Black Americans, Hours of operation and ease of scheduling office visits for PT may not fit the needs of Black Americans, Family responsibilities, lack of time, or lack of child care, Federal government intervention to collect and analyze data and to ensure health and social programs address the needs of the Black community, The use of public health officials to connect providers, educators, transportation, and service organizations to help improve health access and outcomes in the Black community, The use of community organizations to connect people of color to appropriate medical services and to help remove barriers to those services, Education of healthcare providers to the specific needs of Black Americans and to create collaborative models of care across the healthcare spectrum. Boards cannot protect the public if members of the public do not feel comfortable accessing PT services or reporting claims to the board.
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