Forum - Spring 2011
Table of Contents
Regular Columns:
Additional Articles:
You will find a list of 2011 Federation board and committee meetings along with some external regulatory organizations’ meetings.
“The 2011 NPTE Summit”
Last time I wrote this column I was thinking about changes and transitions. How little did I know how much change was on the way.
The Georgia ruling requiring changes in our exam program; more than a dozen WebEx meetings were held to inform and receive feedback from as many of you as possible; a new public member was appointed; and the annual board retreat focused on the exam process.
“Getting Ready for the 2011 CBA Forum”
Wow, has it already been six months since the annual meeting in Denver, Colorado? Before you know it, it will be September and we’ll all be meeting again in Charlotte, North Carolina, discussing the pros and cons of administration of the physical therapy profession.
“Advice Regarding Advice”
Should we commence a magazine article with a Shakespearian quote? For instance, Dick the butcher’s comment to Jack Cade in response to the suggested initiation of a social revolution?
"The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” (King Henry VI, Act 4 Scene 2)
This line is likely misperceived by most as indicating a desire to eradicate the profession from the perspective of a frustrated person, fed up with the complications of law and scholarly analyses. In reality, Dick the butcher is suggesting that lawyers provide rational thinking and a basis for order and control over what would otherwise be chaos.
This column addresses the legislative and regulatory activity currently being addressed in various jurisdictions.
In 2004, Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber of ProPublica wrote a series of articles about a very troubled hospital in Los Angeles. It was started in 1965 to provide care to a minority population that did not have health resources easily available.
Over the years it had become one of the worst hospitals in the country, jeopardizing the very people that it was attempting to help. They showed that by any variety of standards, this hospital was incredibly challenged.
One of the key findings was that nurses were doing very harmful things, such as giving patients the wrong drugs and turning down cardiac monitors. Patients were dying without the cause being noted.
Caveon Test Security didn’t invent data forensics, which is a statistical methodology widely used in law enforcement and other investigations.
However, in 2003, Caveon introduced it into the testing field, and now there are people working for other companies called data forensic analysts. There were no such things until Caveon came along in 2003.
When the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy had examination breaches, recruiters, colleges and employers put significant pressure on the board of pharmacy members.
They said, “You can’t do this because it’s going to cut down access;” “People won’t have vital services;” and “Pharmacy services are needed, so you need to back off and rethink your decision.”
The National Board of Examiners in Optometry cheating incident focused on the March 2010 administration of part one of the licensure exam. One school alerted NBEO of a piracy event involving one student. There had been a similar incident in 2009, but it was rectified before the exam. The 2010 incident, however, was after the fact.
The Virginia Department of Health Professions (DHP), an umbrella agency for 13 health regulatory boards, started a comprehensive sanctioning reference study in 2001. The Board of Medicine and Board of Nursing were the first boards to go through the process.
All sorts of data were examined. DHP found, for instance, that an older woman physician was more likely to have her license suspended as compared to younger males. This was true when controlling for a variety of other factors including prior board history and seriousness of the offense. It was important to pull those biases out of the data.
The delegate assembly directed FSBPT to investigate ways in which member boards could help licensees manage ethical challenges. Working with an established program – the ProBE Program – was identified as a way in which individuals with ethical decision making difficulties could receive remediation.
In the credentialing of foreign applicants and verification of schools, it has long been evident that there are such things as diploma mills. These are generally easy to identify as they have no recognition or accreditation, and there is no actual “brick and mortar” building.
In recent months the credentialing agencies for foreign physical therapy graduates have been grappling with a new twist to this concept. These are the Private Career Colleges (PCC) found in Ontario and some distance education learning programs in India. This article will hopefully identify the concerns and how the credentialing agencies work to identify the status of the schools.
In this article, we will also discuss transitional master’s (T-MPT) or transitional DPT (TDPT) programs versus entry-level PT programs and their implications for initial licensure.