Attitudes towards learning professional ethics in undergraduate physiotherapy students: A STROBE compliant cross-sectional study.

Abstract

BACKGROUND\nEthics is a key competence to be acquired by physiotherapy students to ensure quality care. However, students may not be aware of the importance of ethics for the development of their clinical practice, in the same way that their attitudes towards Professional Ethics are unknown within their curriculum.\n\n\nOBJECTIVES\nThe aim of this study was to identify the attitudes towards learning Professional Ethics among undergraduate students of Physiotherapy Degree and compare the attitude between the educational years.\n\n\nDESIGN\nA cross-sectional study was carried out.\n\n\nSETTINGS\nPhysiotherapy Degree at the University of Valencia, Spain.\n\n\nPARTICIPANTS\nIn the study 340 physiotherapy students participated.\n\n\nMETHODS\nThis was a quantitative study with a cross-sectional observational design. The students of the different years of the Physiotherapy Degree had to complete the Attitudes Questionnaire towards Professional Ethics in Physiotherapy in order to analyse the study objective.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe four educational years scored 3.80 or more in the questionnaire. Second-year students scored the highest (4.25\xa0±\xa00.35) and had significantly more favourable attitudes towards learning ethics in relation to the rest of the years (p\xa0=\xa00.007 vs. first; p\xa0<\xa00.001 vs. third and fourth). First-year students (4.09\xa0±\xa00.37) obtained a significantly higher score than third (3.86\xa0±\xa00.35) and fourth years (3.80\xa0±\xa00.33) with p\xa0<\xa00.001 vs. both third and fourth. Finally, in relation to the 3 categories of the items questionnaire the mean scores showed significant differences between the second year and the rest of the years.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThe attitudes towards learning Professional Ethics among students of the Physiotherapy Degree at the university is favourable, although it varies depending on the academic year, with the students in the academic year in which Ethics is taught (i.e. second year students) being the ones with better attitudes.