Does Residency and/or Fellowship Training Impact Professional Engagement?
Purpose/Hypothesis: Professional engagement is one aspect that may mitigate burnout in healthcare. However, little is known about professional engagement of physical therapists (PTs). The purpose of this study was to examine professional engagement of PTs in the United States (US) and compare responses among residency trained, fellowship trained, and non-residency/fellowship trained PTs.
Number of Subjects: 2940 licensed PTs in the US (91 residency trained, 65 fellowship trained, and 2784 non residency/fellowship training). Median years of practice was 18 years.
Materials and Methods: An online survey was sent to PTs with 15 yes/no questions regarding levels of professional engagement. The survey also included items related to the participant’s background and training. The respondents were categorized by whether or not they completed a residency, fellowship, both, or neither. Frequency analyses and univariate logistic regression were used to predict the odds of professional engagement for each of the 15 items. Significance was set a priori to p<0.05. Only respondents with complete data were included in each analyses.
Results: Residency trained PTs were more likely than non-residency/fellowship trained PTs to be professionally engaged broadly in the areas of teaching, publishing, and participating in residency/fellowship training (OR range: 2.0 to 4.4). In the areas of non-professional community organization involvement, residency trained PTs were less likely to participate than non-residency/fellowship trained PTs (OR range: 0.32 to 0.58). In the sub-group analyses of PTs with 8 years or less experience, residency trained PTs were more likely than non-residency/fellowship trained PTs to participate in 12 of the 15 professional engagement activities (OR range: 2.0 to 13.0). Fellowship trained PTs were also more likely than non-residency/fellowship trained PTs to participate in 12 of 15 professional engagement measures, including professional service (OR range: 1.8 to 6.3).
Conclusions: This is the first national survey evaluating the professional engagement of PTs with differing levels of post-professional training. Results suggest that residency trained PTs are more likely to be involved in teaching, publishing, and residency/fellowship training than PTs who are not residency or fellowship trained. Residency training appears to have an even larger impact on the likelihood of professional engagement in the first 8 years of PT practice. Fellowship trained PTs are more likely to be involved in teaching, publishing, professional service, and residency/fellowship training than PTs who have not completed a residency or fellowship.
Clinical Relevance: These results may have implications pertaining to PTs pursuing residency and/or fellowship training, development of residency and fellowship opportunities, job choice for PTs (e.g. selection of employers who invest in hiring residency/fellowship graduates) and employer policies.