Physical Therapy
One of the most rapidly growing occupations in the United States today is Physical Therapy. The United States Department of Labor has projected 23,000 unfilled physical therapist positions in the year 2000 and a lack of qualified physical therapists to fill them (www.apta.org). While Physical Therapy grows rapidly, questions of ethics in this field have also grown in large quantities. Physical therapy is the treatment of disease through physical means, including light, heat, sound waves, electricity, magnetic fields, and exercise (www.byu.edu). This means that therapists use many different forms to treat people, and treating people can be a large challenge because of all the different possibilities that could occur with the different treatments. Physical Therapy is a very rewarding and lucrative profession if the problems that come along with the job are dealt with in a capable manner. The main problem with Physical Therapy is the problem of the ethics of the profession. There are many ethical conflicts such as how to charge based on your services, and what types of services to give to each individual patient. To guide physical therapists in their decision making the American Physical Therapy Association came up with a code of
A few of the future ethical problems they outlined are the over-utilization of services, the protection of the patient’s rights, the justification of the appropriate fees for the services rendered, the ethical guidelines for the use of human subjects in research, and responsibilities of physical therapists. The over-utilization of services would be using the service too much. The protection of the patient’s rights includes privacy issues. The justification of the appropriate fees for the services rendered would be proper billing. The ethical guidelines for the use of human subjects in research includes making sure the human subjects are not harmed in any way, and are treated fairly. The responsibilities of physical therapists include their duty to respond to environmental issues, as well as social issues (Triezenberg and Purtilo). The third and final category discussed was business and economics. The issues outlined in this category included appropriate fees, advertising, endorsement of equipment, exploitive business relationships, and billing fraud. Physical therapists are expected to charge appropriate fees for their services, they are expected to advertise fairly and truthfully, they should endorse equipment without exploiting themselves or others, and they should bill fairly and justly for their services (Triezenberg and Purtilo). The government has taken many steps to fix these problems. The main government agency for these problems, Medicare, has done many evaluations and reviews to ensure things are being done right, especially in nursing homes. Medicare is now requiring more documentation regarding health care and is also making sure that all employees are aware of the guidelines that they set. Medicare is also making sure that therapists and assistants clearly know their job role, and do not do work that they are not authorized to do (How to Fix Therapy Services). These principles have been addresses, but there are still many problems in the system. To a
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Approximate Word count = 1341
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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