Personal Health Behaviors and Role-Modeling Attitudes of Physical Therapists and Physical Therapist Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title>Background</jats:title><jats:p>Physical therapists have been encouraged to engage in health promotion practice. Health professionals who engage in healthy behaviors themselves are more apt to recommend those behaviors, and patients are more motivated to change their behaviors when their health care provider is a credible role model.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Objective</jats:title><jats:p>The purpose of this study was to describe the health behaviors and role-modeling attitudes of physical therapists and physical therapist students.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Design</jats:title><jats:p>This study was a descriptive cross-sectional survey.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods</jats:title><jats:p>A national sample of 405 physical therapists and 329 physical therapist students participated in the survey. Participants' attitudes toward role modeling and behaviors related to physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, abstention from smoking, and maintenance of a healthy weight were measured. Wilcoxon rank sum tests were used to examine differences in attitudes and behaviors between physical therapists and physical therapist students.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results</jats:title><jats:p>A majority of the participants reported that they engage in regular physical activity (80.8%), eat fruits and vegetables (60.3%), do not smoke (99.4%), and maintain a healthy weight (78.7%). Although there were no differences in behaviors, physical therapist students were more likely to believe that role modeling is a powerful teaching tool, physical therapist professionals should “practice what they preach,” physical activity is a desirable behavior, and physical therapist professionals should be role models for nonsmoking and maintaining a healthy weight.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Limitations</jats:title><jats:p>Limitations of this study include the potential for response bias and social desirability bias.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusions</jats:title><jats:p>Physical therapists and physical therapist students engage in health-promoting behaviors at similarly high rates but differ in role-modeling attitudes.</jats:p></jats:sec>

Motivations and the Level of Practicing Physical Activities by Physio-Kinetotherapy Students

“…Recent studies have confirmed that physiotherapists should be models in PA practice in order to motivate and educate patients about the importance of a physically active lifestyle [3,4]. However, among physicians, physiotherapists are the most physically active, although according to Chevan et al, 2010, no study has described their PA habits, and in this context, our study focuses on the assessment of this aspect [5].…”

Construction of a new questionnaire for assessing physical therapy student attitudes towards their education and profession and testing its validity and reliability

“…There are many studies which tried to assess student attitudes towards the persons with disability [3,4], elderly [5,6], Evidence-based practice [7], inter professional education [8], personal health behaviors [9], academic dis-…”

“…There are many studies which tried to assess student attitudes towards the persons with disability [3,4], elderly [5,6], Evidence-based practice [7], inter professional education [8], personal health behaviors [9], academic disOriginal Article honesty [10] and physical therapy assisstants [11] etc. But the attitude of physical therapy students towards their education and profession was studied only in few studies [12][13][14].…”

Weight stigma in health: (re)thinking weight in a physiotherapy context

“…Interestingly, in the same study, under 20% of the participants reported receiving any formal training in weight management. Black, Marcoux, Stiller, Qu and Gellish (2012) even suggested that physiotherapists should discipline their own bodies to become "role models" for patients by maintaining a "healthy weight". This focus on fatness seems to follow the pattern of increasing medicalisation of weight described in the last chapter and may be based on the same dominant weight discourses.…”

“…Physiotherapy literature often discusses obesity as a contributing factor to disorders that physiotherapists treat, or the effects of weight change on such conditions (e.g., Black et al, 2012;Woolner & Dean, 2013). However, the relevance of body weight to the conditions that physiotherapists often treat is far from unequivocal.…”