Educational requirements continue to be a flashpoint for our profession and there are more still on the horizon. The fear among students like myself is that these changes will be made without adequately monitoring the impact on patient care, implications for direct access, and ultimately the effect on our practice. One issue I believe serves as a model for how these changes should be made involves the once-proposed change of PTA education to a Bachelor’s degree and the studies that examined the implications.
In 2012, the APTA put together a task force to study the impact of switching PTA education to a Bachelor’s and away from an Associate’s. When the report came back dictating the need for more information before blindly putting a mandate in place, it was a win for students. They outlined the need to do a work study of how PTAs were assisting PTs, how a Bachelor’s program would be structured, and ultimately, what benefits in patient care or job satisfaction would come with such a move. These robust studies need to be the norm, rather than the exception when it comes to determining the educational structure of our profession.
The issues at hand move beyond the classroom or the workplace, however, and can reach down into people’s pocketbooks. Average costs for a PTA Associate’s degree in 2008 averaged $7,816 a year for public in-state institutions and up to $26,493 a year for private colleges according to data from the APTA. The length of these programs, start to finish, was about 2 years. A Bachelor’s program, on the other hand, would both be longer and more expensive. These programs typically last four years and cost an average of $24,610 for public in-state tuition or $49,320 for a private school (data compiled by the College Board, and represents the 2016-2017 academic year). This study from the APTA that examined the need for additional education instead of blindly mandating it may have saved students tens of thousands of dollars.
This is a topic that spans to other healthcare professions as well. The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) just came out with a sweeping mandate that all occupational therapy (OT) programs move to a doctorate and all certified occupational therapy assistant (COTA) programs to a Bachelors by 2027. This represents a clear dichotomy of educational change. Occupational therapy programs are already moving to a doctorate to advance their profession, representing a need and a demand for change. The COTA mandate, on the other hand, may not advance the ceiling of occupational therapy and will have unclear effects on patient care and access to more patients. It seems simply to be a change for change’s sake. There is no demand for Bachelor’s programs for COTA education and comes with an increased debt load while taking longer to complete.
Educational changes should always be made only after clear study and reflection. DPT education is still very much in flux, with questions surrounding mandatory residency, improving clinical education, and tiered licensure. It’s vitally important for our profession that we strive to understand the impacts these changes will have, and not to saddle our eventual providers with increased burdens while not improving their practice. I hope the APTA’s decision that studied the effects of increased education on PTA practice will become the model by which we enact deliberate and beneficial educational changes into the future.