Physical Therapist Residency Competency-Based Education: Development of an Assessment Tool
Purpose: The American Board of Physical Therapy Residency & Fellowship Education (ABPTRFE) developed physical therapist resident competencies and an evaluation instrument for several reasons. First, it defines the expectations of residency education—for individuals undergoing residency training, the program, and society—by providing a consistent set of core competencies. Second, the evaluation instrument identifies and measures the capabilities of physical therapist residents using milestones, or benchmarks, as they progress through training, while at the same time identifying their strengths and weaknesses in a timely manner. Finally, the competencies, with their associated evaluation instrument, assure the public that graduates of a physical therapist residency program have the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to perform their roles in society.
Methods and/or Description of Project: Utilizing and analyzing resources from other health care professional organizations—including the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME; related to its identified residency competencies, behaviors, and benchmarks) and the Description of Specialty Practice (DSP) documents from the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties—the work group identified commonalities in knowledge, skills, and attributes for all defined areas of physical therapist specialties.
At the same time, the work group considered the physical therapist education, entry-level competencies, and expected outcomes of residency training. Through continued discussion and refinement, the work group established 7 core competencies, with associated critical behaviors, for physical therapy residents in all areas of specialty practice.
Each competency includes multiple behaviors with associated benchmarks, utilizing Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy classifications. The performance of each behavior is assessed independent of other behaviors for that competency.
Tentative Outline/Schedule • Welcome and introduction of session
• Frame Competency-Based Education (incorporate/summarize presentation at ELC 2018 and CSM 2019 and how we have proceeded before these discussions)
• Physical therapist residency education is prime for competency-based education • Use ACGME as example and pull any other professions (eg, pharmacy)
• Processed used to create PT resident competencies
• Describe the validation process of the competencies
• Review the outcomes of validation
• Large group discussion with panel facilitation and response
Results/Outcomes: The literature related to competency-based education is vast. Discussions within the physical therapist profession, related to professional education, have begun. This presentation will incorporate these earlier discussions as well as introduce the physical therapist resident competency and Residency Competency Instrument. The desired outcome of this session is to gain a better understanding of competency-based education for physical therapist residency training and engage the audience in developing residency curricular activities to support resident learning and achievement of the competencies.
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: This presentation is directly linked to the conference theme as residency training for physical therapists sets sail into competency-based education. While residency education is one timeframe in the educational pathway for physical therapists, these competencies can be assimilated into professional education of the physical therapist.