Benchmarking the Physical Therapist Academic Environment to Understand the Student Experience

Background. Identifying excellence in physical therapist academic environments is complicated by the lack of nationally available benchmarking data. Objective. The objective of this study was to compare a physical therapist academic environment to another health care profession (medicine) academic environment using the Association of American Medical Colleges Graduation Questionnaire (GQ) survey. Design. The design consisted of longitudinal benchmarking. Methods. Between 2009 and 2017, the GQ was administered to graduates of a physical therapist education program (Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science, Carver College of Medicine, The University of Iowa [PTRS]). Their ratings of the educational environment were compared to nationwide data for a peer health care profession (medicine) educational environment. Benchmarking to the GQ capitalizes on a large, psychometrically validated database of academic domains that may be broadly applicable to health care education. The GQ captures critical information about the student experience (eg, faculty professionalism, burnout, student mistreatment) that can be used to characterize the educational environment. This study hypothesized that the ratings provided by 9 consecutive cohorts of PTRS students (n = 316) would reveal educational environment differences from academic medical education. Results. PTRS students reported significantly higher ratings of the educational emotional climate and student-faculty interactions than medical students. PTRS and medical students did not differ on ratings of empathy and tolerance for ambiguity. PTRS students reported significantly lower ratings of burnout than medical students. PTRS students descriptively reported observing greater faculty professionalism and experiencing less mistreatment than medical students. Limitations. The generalizability of these findings to other physical therapist education environments has not been established. Conclusions. Selected elements of the GQ survey revealed differences in the educational environments experienced by physical therapist students and medical students. All physical therapist academic programs should adopt a universal method to benchmark the educational environment to understand the student experience.