Responding to Challenges for New Alignment

Abstract

By outlining the challenges facing physical therapists in today's health care and educational environments, Dr Jules Rothstein has made a case for a more organized and efficient approach to the business of the sections with the American Physical Therapy Association. He suggests that our alignment (ie, sections organized around areas of practice, practice settings, and role delineation) fosters isolation and contributes to inefficiency and lack of consensus building. As a result, he has specifically suggested disbanding the Education and Research Sections in order to form a new entity outside the section structure. Such restructuring is conceived to result in one-stop shopping for academic faculty to meet and discuss important topics related to what academic faculty members actually do. Because the alternative structure would meet outside the formal section structure, academic faculty would be able to meet, cross-fertilize, and still be able to participate in content sections (eg, Orthopaedics, Neurology, Pediatrics). Originally, after reading Dr Rothstein's thoughts, I filed them away under the category of another in the long line of thought-provoking editorials. Although his words stimulated some unformed thought, the resulting internal discourse never exceeded that threshold somewhere in my brain that compels me to act. The time is appropriate now, however, to comment on a writing that is essentially endorsing the elimination of the section for which I was recently elected President! First, I sought input from a variety of trusted sources, hoping for some sort of consensus that would help me along in my response. Typical of the consensus-building process in physical therapy, I quickly realized there was not a consensus. Responses to my inquiries to change the structure of the Section on Research through collaboration with the Education Section ranged from do nothing (eg, are comfortable with things as they are) to do everything we can to implement his suggestions. From the perspective of the Section on Research, I must be candid and admit that there are those who are quite comfortable with our present structure and believe, unlike Dr Rothstein, that the Section on Research is already maximally responsive to its membership. There are also a significant number of folks who believe that the goals and objectives of the Section on Research differ so substantially from those of the Education Section that we risk alienating our respective members by combining our sections without considerable planning and dialogue. I believe we need to consider Dr Rothstein's remarks in a visionary sense and be open to changes that are reflective of the changing environments within the health care system. Indeed, there were those within the membership of both sections whose response to the editorial was supportive of the need to develop an academic entity that would be responsive to the needs of academic environments. Perhaps another way of looking at this situation is to imagine what is best for the academic environment as a whole rather than any one individual who is aligned with either research or education. I offer some issues that not only continue to challenge our profession as a whole but whose solutions must occur within academic environments and may be facilitated by cooperative efforts of the Research and Education Sections. As an example, I would include the new standards from the Commission on Accreditation of Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE), which now clearly state that evidence of scholarship on the part of all faculty is a must in order to fulfill certain criteria. I would argue that in this time when increasing pressure is being placed on education programs to produce cost-effective clinicians at the time of graduation (not after 1 or 2 years on the job), professional preparation should be under a great deal of scrutiny, particularly by faculty members who profess to be interested in promoting the use of science in clinical practice and in the academic and clinical training of new therapists. …