Leadership Skills as an Essential Competency: A Missing Link in DPT Education
Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to intentionally engage the participants in a discussion of leadership skills as an essential competency domain of physical therapist education. The presenters aim to advance the conversation on the necessity of development of leadership skills at the entry-level and assessment of these skills within the entrustable professional activities framework.Methods and/or Description of Project: Leadership development is a hot topic in healthcare and physical therapy is no exception. Competencies, a set of defined behaviors/skills that are expected within a certain role, provide a structured guide for the development of those behaviors and skills within graduate healthcare education. Interprofessional education competencies (IPEC) identified leadership skills and were developed to improve patient safety and the delivery of quality care. Although, it has been 15 years since the Institute of Medicine challenged us to reform health education and professional development of our health professionals, we have made little progress integrating IPEC to guide change in physical therapist education and practice environments. The physical therapist education community has focused on topics of professionalism, communication, and cultural competence without explicitly addressing leadership skills. When leadership is expected, there is a lack of agreement on what explicit behaviors describe its inclusion. Professional groups within and external to physical therapy have explored the value of the Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA) framework to describe measurable behavioral competencies essential for best practice across continuums for health career professional development. The EPA framework is promising in that it may allow us to integrate multiple dimensions of competence to describe the broad skills/behaviors needed for quality patient care.Results/Outcomes: This interactive presentation will challenge our profession to establish leadership skills as an essential domain of competence and embed leadership skills development into entry-level curriculums. Translating newly clarified leadership competencies and illustrating their value as stand-alone professional competencies or as an integral domain of competence within the EPA framework may be the missing link to a more comprehensive view of the professional development continuum in physical therapist education and practice.Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: Our Leadership Landscape: Perspectives from the Ground Level to 30,000 Feet: This presentation is directly linked to the overall theme of the ELC 2018 Conference and to the subtheme, "Embedding leadership skills across didactic and clinical education." Participants will be engaged and challenged to consider leadership skills as an essential competency domain of entry level education. This competency domain will then be framed within entrustable professional activities thus giving the participant an operatational insertion of the leadership competency domain into an entry level physical therapist curriculum.References: Chesbro SB, Jensen GM, Boissonnault WG. Entrustable Professional Activities as a Framework for Continued Professional Competence: Is Now the Time? Phys Ther. 2018 Jan 1;98(1):37. Ten Cate O, Billett S. Competency-based medical education: origins, perspectives and potentialities. Med Educ. 2014; 48: 325-332. Overview of the HLA Competency Directory. 2010. www.healthcareleadershipalliance.org/. Accessed September 15, 2016. Association of American Medical Colleges. Core Entrustable Activities for Entering Residency: Curriculum Developers Guide. https://members.aamc.org/eweb/ upload/Core%20EPA%20Curriculum%20 Dev%20Guide.pdf. Published 2014. Accessed December 1, 2017 Grignon TP, Henley E, Lee K, Abentroth, Megan J, Jette DU. Expected graduate outcomes in US physical therapist education programs: A qualitative study. J Phys Ther Educ. 2014;28(1):48–Course Objectives: At the end of this session, the participant will be able to: Justify the need for leadership skills in healthcare and entry-level physical therapist practice Clarify leadership competencies as essential for entry level practice Defend the inclusion of “personal” leadership skills as a domain of competency for entry level Discuss the value of the EPA framework in assessing physical therapist best practice to guide professional developmentInstructional Methods: Short lecture with embedded Q & A, Discussion groups, Participant PanelTentative Outline/Schedule: 15 minutes Define the contexts of leadership development within health care professionals 15 minutes Compare and contrast various evidence based models of leadership competencies 15 minutes Define “personal” leadership skills as a domain of competency 15 minutes Explore the integration of leadership competencies within the Entrustable professional activities (EPAs) Assessment Framework 20 minutes Next Steps- Panel/Participant Discussion 10 minutes Questions/Answers