The Development of Physical Therapy Educational Goals and Standard Curriculum

물리치료학 교육목표와 표준 교과과정안 개발

We discuss why many current physical therapy entry-level programs are not designed to educate the type of physical therapy practitioners needed for the 21st century. We face a situation that we have to promote the profession's role in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of movement dysfunctions and the enhancement of the physical health and functional abilities of members of the public. The way how to train professional physical therapists became crucial. The purpose of study was to enhance the educational goals of physical therapy and the physical therapy curricula in Korea. In this study, we compared physical therapy training curricula recommended by WCPT with physical therapy training curricula in universities in other countries by dividing physical therapy curricula in universities and colleges into physical therapy students' electives, major required courses, labs and clinical practices, and counting the proportion of each category in the total credit hours. We discuss differences and similarities between curriculum in a university in Korea and curriculum in a university in the United States. We discussed possibly problematic portions of current physical therapy training curricula in korean universities. Finally, we statistically analyzed the regulations of WCPT and Health and Welfare Ministry in Japan, the Physical therapy curriculum of Creighton Entry-level DPT Program in the U.S. and the Inje University in Korea. The progressing direction of curricula in Korea had been researched. The future direction that korean physical therapy is to use an united curriculum that includes basic requirements of WCPT for all universities and colleges in Korea, rather than using each university's own modified version. The results of study can be helpful for developing a basic level of integrated curricula in universities and colleges in Korea.