Social Justice in Physical Therapy: A Workshop to Explore Strategies to Enhance Diversity and Inclusion
Purpose: The way in which social injustices may be operating without our explicit awareness and may be contributing to the lack of underrepresented minorities in physical therapy education, research, and practice will be explored in this session. The overall purpose of this session is to highlight the social injustices that exist in physical therapy education and develop strategies that will create a more inclusive and diverse profession.
Methods and/or Description of Project: In this interactive session, social justice will be defined and social injustices in physical therapy will be identified. Strategies that promote social justice in the clinic, classroom, and the profession will be explored and practiced. Concepts including unconscious bias, microaggressions, code switching, public perceptions about physical therapy, social hierarchy in healthcare, recruitment strategies, and admission processes will be discussed. Participants will have the opportunity to begin to identify their implicit biases, identify examples of microaggressions they have observed or experienced, reflect on public perceptions of physical therapy that may impact recruitment of students into the profession, and examine their recruitment and admissions processes to identify opportunities to make changes that support diversity and inclusion.
Results/Outcomes: The workshop will provide practical tools and skills for attendees to use to promote diversity and inclusion in their institutions. The ultimate result will be a more inclusive and diverse academy and profession.
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: The physical therapy profession is not representative of the members of society we serve. It is imperative that we take action to attract a diverse group of applicants to our education programs. Efforts to recruit more diverse applicants have fallen short. In this session, aspects of physical therapy education, research, and practice that may be deterring members of underrepresented groups from joining and engaging will be identified and strategies to address them explored. For many members of the physical therapy academy, this work will be novel, and is aligned with the conference theme of Setting Sail: Discovering a New World of Opportunities. Specifically, this session aligns with the subtheme, Navigating Workforce Needs for Society, Developing a Diverse and Culturally Competent Physical Therapy Workforce and Attracting Talent to the Physical Therapy Profession: Ideas and Challenges for the Future.