Changes in Critical Thinking Scores: An Examination of One Group of Physical Therapist Students

Background and Purpose. Education of physical therapists has broadened over the last 80 years to include not only the traditional “hands-on” skills, but also more generic skills such as professionalism, communication, problem solving, and critical thinking. Critical thinking has also been recognized as a necessary component of effective clinical reasoning. However, critical thinking in physical therapist students has not been widely studied. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate critical-thinking skills in a group of professional physical therapist students and determine if changes occurred over time. Subjects. Two hundred students enrolled in the 5-year, professional physical therapist education program at a private New England university participated: 86 students participated in the third year of the program, 53 students participated in the fourth year of the program, and 61 students participated in the fifth year of the program. Of the 200 students, 157 were female and 43 were male. Methods. The participants completed one standardized test of critical thinking: the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). A one-way analysis of variance with post hoc analysis was used to compare mean scores on the CCTST among the three groups. Results. Statistically significant differences between the scores of the third-year and fifth-year students (M=2.59, P=0.000) and the scores of the fourth-year and fifth-year students (M=1.81, P=0.05) were found. No significant difference was found between the scores of the third-year and fourth-year students. These results indicate a statistically significant increase in student's critical-thinking skills from the third year to the fifth year in physical therapist students at the target university. Discussion and Conclusion. Two main differences between third-year and fourth-year students, when compared with the fifth-year students, were the additional years of didactic education and an 8-week clinical internship in the summer after the fourth year. The extent to which participation in formal classes, as compared with clinical internships, has an impact upon critical-thinking skills has not been studied. The results of this study indicate that further investigation of educational variables that improve critical-thinking skills in physical therapist students is warranted.