Ethical Issues In Physical Therapy Essay

Physical therapy is a healthcare profession that evaluates and develops a care plan that fits your needs for therapy. It can be a rewarding field but, it also can be very draining. PTs can face emotional and physical stress, burnout, and ethical issues. Job stress is one of the reasons why physical therapists get burnout. The field is physically demanding on your body and as you age it can be harder for you to give your clients your full potential because your body is becoming older. It is important to learn how to take care of yourself as a PT even though you are taking care of patients daily. Ethical issues play a role in problems that Pts often face, for example doing what is best for your patient may be going against your rules and regulations.

These titles led me to what I needed to write my report. When I searched “Problems physical therapist face” I found a letter about burnout by Stephanie Weyrauch, DPT. This explains her personal experience and how she influences preventing burnout for other Pts. By searching ethical issues Robert Richardson wrote about how Pts face ethical issues.

Searching “Job Strain” helped me find a method for participants who were randomly selected that were a part of the American Physical Therapy Association to be questioned about their job strain. The main outcome of the individuals included work-related pain. The purpose of the study was to find out levels of psychological job demands and job control. As a result of this method, 16% of therapists reported changing jobs because of job strain and

Dr. Ellen Zambo Anderson, PT, PhD, surveyed 1366 APTA members on burnout in their careers. The characteristics of this study describe emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. In the results she found that 13% were experiencing burnout, 34% experienced high emotional exhaustion, 30% with high depersonalization, and 32% felt low personal accomplishment. “Those at high emotional exhaustion were at increased risk for developing burnout”. (Anderson) Physical stress can affect individuals' well-being. Lifting patients of all sizes can be physical wear and tear on your body. If you have multiple patients in one day and they are all heavier sets, your body is going to get tired. PTs work long hours a day which can be exhausting. Emotionally PT can be draining because you may have a client that you see, and you feel like you never get anything resolved because they always have something wrong with them. You are predicted to work with patients who have multiple fractures and severe trauma. Patients come in that depend on wheelchairs and have no mobility and cannot walk. You may see these patients for a few weeks, maybe even years, and during these sessions, you could be taking on the depression and trauma that the patient feels from feeling insecure about