Abstract
BackgroundHealth knowledge develops fast and includes a lot of ambiguous or tentative information. In their daily routine, both health care students and professionals continuously have to make judgments about the viability of health knowledge. People’s epistemological beliefs (EBs) and their therapeutic health concepts are factors that influence how they deal with health knowledge. However, very little is known about the occurrence of these factors at different stages of people’s career. The present study examines the EBs and therapeutic health concepts of physiotherapy students in their vocational training and the EBs and therapeutic health concepts of professionals.MethodsIn a cross-sectional study physiotherapy students and professional physiotherapists filled in a questionnaire that measured their personal EBs about physiotherapy and medicine, as well as their biomedical and biopsychosocial therapeutic health concepts. We compared the participants’ EBs regarding both knowledge domains, and their therapeutic health concepts using paired samples t-tests. We also examined the differences between first-year students, advanced students, and professionals regarding their EBs and their therapeutic health concepts using ANOVAs.ResultsEighty-three students and 84 professionals participated in this study, 114/167 (68%) participants were female. EBs as well as therapeutic health concepts differed depending upon the participants’ training status. Professionals had more sophisticated EBs than students regarding both knowledge in physiotherapy (F(2, 164) = 6.74, P = 0.002, η2p = 0.08) and knowledge in medicine (F(2, 164) = 5.93, P = 0.003, η2p = 0.07). In addition, high values in a biopsychosocial therapeutic health concept already occurred in an early phase of training (F(2, 164) = 5.39, P = 0.005, η2p = 0.06), whereas increased values in a biomedical concept did not occur until people’s professional life (F(2, 164) = 10.99, P < 0.001, η2p = 0.12).ConclusionsThe specificities of personal EBs and therapeutic health concepts in different stages of health care training have so far been insufficiently considered in medical education research. The current study has aimed to shed light on the occurrence of these concepts in students as compared to professionals. We point out implications of our findings for educational practice and make suggestions for future research.
Highlights
Health knowledge develops fast and includes a lot of ambiguous or tentative information
The present analysis aims to contribute to a better understanding of epistemological beliefs (EBs) and therapeutic health concepts of physiotherapy students in comparison to professional physiotherapists
Internal consistency was good for the Connotative Aspects of Epistemological Beliefs (CAEB) factor texture in both domains but poor for the factor variability
Summary
Health knowledge develops fast and includes a lot of ambiguous or tentative information In their daily routine, both health care students and professionals continuously have to make judgments about the viability of health knowledge. In order to master their respective tasks, both health care students and professionals consistently have to make judgments about the viability of health knowledge This holds true all the more as health knowledge is widespread and very comprehensive, develops fast, and includes a lot of ambiguous or tentative information [1,2]. That to date they have been insufficiently investigated in educational [11] and especially medical education research [2,5] This is a shortcoming, because health care professionals are explicitly called upon for critical appraisal of health knowledge and medical literature— since evidence-based medicine becomes increasingly significant in the course of their practice [12,13,14,15]. This applies both to the phase of their medical training and to their entire professional life
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
