期刊名称：Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions
电子版ISSN：1975-5937
出版年度：2020
卷号：17
DOI：10.3352/jeehp.2020.17.24
语种：English
出版社：Korea Health Insurance Licensing Examination Institute
摘要：Background/rationale: It is difficult to present the criteria for the definition of physical therapy because the definition varies in different countries according to theduration of educationand legal circumstances. However, the World Federation of Physical Therapists defines physical therapists as “personsengaged in healthcare related to providing functional enhancement, damage prevention, rehabilitation treatment, intervention, and recovery service, while maintaining and developing motion and functional capabilities when individuals’ movements and functional capabilities are impaired by age, damage, disease, disability, environmental factors, etc.”[1]. The Korean Physical Therapists Association defines physical therapy as “helping to relieve patients’ pain and further restoring normal social activities by developing and applying physical materials, such as electricity, light, water, air, sound, and exercise, and various instruments and machines for therapeutic purposes, rather than surgery and chemotherapy”[2]. Upon comparing the two definitions, the Korean Physical Therapists Association suggested that physical therapy is performed using physical materials such as exercise therapy and various instruments and machines, whereas the World Federation of Physical Therapists refer to it as various services as well as physical materials and includes information related to diagnosis, evaluation, and prevention. Thus, it is necessary to redefine the competencyof Koreanphysical therapists.Changes in the population and disease structure, changes in medical environment such as the development of medicaltechnology, and subsequent changes in medical personnel policy are major factors involved in the physical therapist competence required by the society [3]. Koreahas entered an aging society with >14% of the elderly aged ≥65 and is expected to enter a super-aging society inthe nearfuture [4]. In preparation for the upcoming super-aging society, the role of physical therapists in charge of disease prevention and healthcare for the elderly is expected to increase. Furthermore, it is estimated that the costof national healthcare will continue to increaseaccording tothe public’s perception of the quality of life, the increase in medical use, overuse of high-tech expensive medical equipment, and the need for healthcare for the elderly and high-quality medicalservices.. Therefore, it isnecessary to improve the quality of physical therapy services in line with the changes in the public’s awareness of health promotion and the increase in national medical costs [3]. Objectives:To cope with the changing healthcare environment, it is necessary to investigate the essential competencyin the clinical practice of physical therapists and to reflect the results in the physical therapy training process. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to provide the basic data for the training of physical therapists and policy formation by analyzing the perception of the importance of physical therapists’ competencyand usage frequencies.
