Physiotherapy Students’ Experiences about Ethical Situations Encountered in Clinical Practices

Abstract

(1) Background: It is important to explore the ethical situations that physiotherapy students encountered in their clinical practices. (2) Methods: Qualitative, explorative, descriptive study. The participants included third-year physiotherapy students. They had to write five narratives about ethical situations encountered in their clinical practices. Krippendorff’s method for qualitative content analysis was used to cluster units within the data to identify emergent themes. The study protocol was approved by the authors’ University Ethic Committee of Human Research (H1515588244257). (3) Result: 280 narratives were reported by 64 students (23.34 ± 4.20 years, 59% women). Eight categories were identified from the qualitative analysis of the data: (a) professional responsibility, (b) professional competence, (c), beneficence, (d) equality and justice, (e) autonomy, (f) confidentiality, (g) respect for privacy, and (h) sincerity. All participants were informed and provided written informed consent. (4) Conclusions: Ethical principles were frequently violated in physiotherapy. Experiences of physiotherapy students must be examined to tailor educational interventions prior to their initiation into practice. Ethics education is needed in workplaces and should be increased in basic education. Facilitating the ethical awareness of future physiotherapists is a challenge for university teachers who provide ethical competence training.

Ethical and cultural competence of social‐ and health care educators from educational institutions – Cross‐sectional study

“…In the work of a social-and health care educator, an educator's professional ethical principles are reflected, among other things, in their readiness to act in conflict situations and their ability to promote equity and inclusion in teaching [50,63]. Educators play a major role in the development of students' ethical competence [26,64]. This result is important, as ethical competence serves as the basis for patient care [22,65,66], an ethically competent educator is able to offer high-quality ethics teaching to future professionals on social-and health care.…”

“…Teaching ethics is important for developing the ethical competence of social-and health care professionals; however, ethical competence is also based on an individual's personal experiences, knowledge, and communication [22]. Nurses make decisions related to ethical issues on a daily basis [23]; therefore, it is important that the teaching of ethics equips students to identify ethical problems and enables them to develop ethical competence through practice [25,26]. Health care professionals face diverse ethical issues and -for this reason -require strong ethical competence to manage conflicts [22,23].…”

Physical Therapists’ Ethical and Moral Sensitivity: A STROBE-Compliant Cross-Sectional Study with a Special Focus on Gender Differences

“…Healthcare professionals clinical practice and quality of care of patients may be influenced by ethical aspects, such as ethical and moral sensitivity, that could affect their daily clinical practice. In this sense, ethics currently has an important role in healthcare professions and especially in the physical therapy field [1][2][3][4][5][6]. It is expected that healthcare professionals have extensive intellectual and practical education to commit themselves to the welfare of those in their care [7].…”

Physiotherapists’ ethical behavior in professional practice: a qualitative study

“…Physiotherapists in their professional practice, as autonomous agents, face complex ethical situations ( 1 ), such as understanding and balancing the needs of patients ( 2 ), of the patients’ families or other professionals. Other situations such as resource limitations, length, and quality of treatments, as well as billing and working within the constraints and opportunities afforded by health policies and institutional systems, may also occur in daily practice.…”