Professional (Entry-Level) Doctoral Degrees in Physical Therapy: Status as of Spring 2003

Journal of Physical Therapy Education, Fall 2006 by Domholdt, Elizabeth, Kerr, Leann O'Reel, Mount, Katherine A

Transition Rationale and Process

Table 5 presents the rationale in favor of or against the transition to the professional DPT degree as reported by the respondents in this study and compared to the results in the spring 2000 study. For this item, all respondents, regardless of the status of the DPT discussion at their institution, were asked to indicate what they saw as the most powerful arguments for and against the transition. Raw data comparisons between 2000 and 2003 were not appropriate because respondents in 2000 generated the transition rationales without prompts, and respondents in 2003 ranked items within the set of rationales generated within the earlier study. Therefore, to compare between the 2000 and 2003 data, the 2000 data were converted into ranks. There was relatively little movement from 2000 to 2003 in the rankings of arguments in favor of the DPT, with no factor moving more than 2 ranks. There was more movement from 2000 to 2003 in the rankings of arguments against the DPT, with lack of faculty resources moving up from sixth to second rank, and institutional factors moving down from first to sixth rank.

Table 6 depicts those factors that were reported by the subset of programs that had made or were making the transition to the DPT to be facilitating or impeding the process. Like Table 5, this information is presented as ranks from 2003 and 2000. Professional trends was the only facilitating factor that moved more than 3 ranks, moving up from seventh to first rank from 2000 to 2003. The impeding factors that showed the most change in rank included: declining applicant pool moving up from eight to fourth rank, inadequate faculty resources moving down from first to fifth rank, and lack of support from the clinical community moving down from second to seventh rank.

Enrollment

The elapsed time between program approval and enrollment of the first doctoral class ranged from less than 12 to 144 months, with a mean of 50.7 months (SD = 21.8). The first year of reported enrollment for professional doctoral degree students was 1993, and the latest year of expected initial enrollment was 2012. The most frequently cited year of first enrollment was 2004 (Figure 1). Once the students were enrolled, the elapsed time to graduation ranged from 25 to 49 months, with a mode of a 36-month curriculum.

Student Qualifications

Figure 2 reflects responses to the portion of our questionnaire that examined whether expectations of prospective students were less rigorous, unchanged, or more rigorous for programs offering the DPT. The majority of respondents reported no change in prerequisites, clinical exposure, grade-point average, or standardized test scores for entry into the doctoral degree programs compared to previous expectations.

Curricular Considerations

Teaching/Learning Approach. Respondents characterized the overall teaching/learning approach of their DPT curriculum as follows: traditional subject-matter approach, 19.3%; problem-based approach, 3.4%; hybrid subject-matter and problem-based approach, 60.0%; and other, 17.3%.