Competency and professional activities of pediatric rehabilitation therapists in three provinces/cities of East China
Objective To investigate the current situation of competency and professional activities of pediatric rehabilitation thera-pists in Jiangsu,Shanghai and Zhejiang.Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted on 168 pediatric rehabilitation therapists in Jiangsu,Shanghai and Zheji-ang,from December,2022 to February,2023,and the general information and the competency were obtained.A total of 35 pediatric rehabilitation therapists were interviewed one-on-one,from October,2022 to January,2023,using thematic framework.Results A total of 162 effective questionnaires were collected.The level of competency of pediatric rehabilitation thera-pists was(3.44±0.87);and it was higher in professional literacy(3.90±0.77)and practice(3.83±0.77),and lower in management and leadership(2.92±1.44),and research(2.14±1.64).Latent class analysis showed that the thera-pists could be divided into four categories,of which the"medium competency"accounted for the most proportion(34.57%),and"low learning and research"was the least(8.64%).The interviews identified problems of compe-tency such as maintaining communication with children's families and managing self-professional development.Conclusion Self-reported rehabilitation competency levels of pediatric rehabilitation therapists in three provinces and cit-ies are above three points in all four dimensions,except for the management and leadership dimension,where the score is below three points.
pediatric rehabilitation therapistrehabilitation competency frameworklatent class analysiscompetencyprofessional activities