Clinical Decision Making Development of Clinical Physical Therapists under the Fee for Service and the Prescription of Physician

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical decision making (CDM) development process throughout the comparison between novice and expert physical therapist as well as develop a CDM model for physical therapists under the fee-for-service (FFS) and physicians' prescriptions. Methods: Purposive sampling techniques were used to select 10 clinical physical therapists paired into five groups (each pair consisted of 1 novice and 1 expert physical therapist). The coding schemes were extracted from interviews and through within- and across-case analyses, cases were summarized. The reliability of coding schemes was confirmed by checking of case summaries by the participants. Results: Novice and expert physical therapists were influenced by two themes, internalized theme and external forces or information. Novice clinicians depended more on external forces or information. Although clinicians should care patients under the FFS and physician's prescription, expert clinicians were more likely to rely on internalized knowledge. Conclusion: The findings of the present study may be used by educators or association officials enhance CDM abilities and knowledge pools of student or novices as well as develop a guide to suitable novices or students under the specific context limiting the development of their CDM.