Zettergren K, Beckett R, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT. Kathleen.Zettergren@quinnipiac.edu.

PURPOSE: Education of physical therapists has broadened over the last 80 years to include not only traditional "hands on" skills, but also additional intangible skills such as professionalism, communication, problem solving and critical thinking. These intangible skills make a significant contribution to effective autonomous practice. Critical thinking skills afford an individual with the abilities to think logically and clearly, solve problems quickly and effectively, and utilize scientific inquiry to render evidence-based therapeutic interventions. Critical thinking has not been widely studied in physical therapist students. The purpose of this study was to evaluate critical thinking skills in a group of entry-level physical therapist students to determine if changes occurred over time. SUBJECTS: Two hundred students enrolled in a five year, entry-level, physical therapist program participated: 84 third year, 49 fourth year and 57 fifth year students. The sample was comprised of 157 female and 43 male students with an average age of 20.5 years. METHODS: Subjects completed The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST), a standardized survey used to measure critical thinking skills in college-aged students. Data were collected during the fall semester from each group. The test was administered as outlined in the accompanying Test Manual and all students completed the test within the allotted 45-minute time-block. ANALYSIS: A one-way ANOVA with post-hoc analysis was used to compare mean scores on the CCTST among the three groups. RESULTS: A statistically significant difference between the scores of the 3^rd year and the 5^th year students and the scores of the 4^th year and 5^th year students was found (F = 7.30, p < .001). No significant difference was found between the scores of the 3^rd and 4^th year students. These results indicate a statistically significant increase in student’s critical thinking skills from the 3^rd and 4^th to the 5^th year in physical therapist students at the target university. CONCLUSIONS: Two potentially significant variables that may improve critical thinking skills are didactic education and clinical internships. Students in the 5^th year have both more didactic training and an 8-week clinical internship in the summer after the 4^th year. Both didactic education and clinical education contribute to the preparation of an autonomous physical therapy practitioner. Studies comparing the impact of classroom versus clinical education have not been performed. The results of this study support further investigation into the educational variables that can improve critical thinking skills in physical therapist students. FUNDING SOURCE: None.

Copyright 2004 by the American Physical Therapy Association

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