The examination of the current ethics topics in physiotherapy curricula and transformational needs

<p dir="ltr">This study was motivated by the ethical transgressions of registered physiotherapists who were found guilty of unprofessional behavior by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), for misconduct that ranged from fraudulent conduct, performance of procedures without obtaining informed consent, and causing harm to patients. This led to an inquiry as to whether ethics are sufficiently covered in the undergraduate physiotherapy education curriculum in South Africa to curb the unprofessional behaviour. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was employed to gather different yet complementary data when evaluating the HPCSA documents, university curricula, and conducting semi-structured interviews of the ethics educators from the respective universities. Using the triangulation method, the qualitative data from the HPCSA transgressions and the qualitative data from the document analysis of the university curricula and the interviews were converged using a mixed method to obtain the results of the study. </p><p dir="ltr">The findings of the study demonstrated that the most frequently committed transgression was charging for services not rendered, followed by inaccurately drafted and false claims submitted to the medical aid. The core professional complaints included failure to establish the identity of a patient before treatment and not obtaining informed consent. The document analysis undertaken demonstrated that the undergraduate university curricula do cover a variety of ethics topics that prepare the students to provide quality patient care as well as ensure ethical behaviours that emphasise care and moral regulation in line with the HPCSA ethical guidelines. The interviews demonstrated curriculum transformation as a response to socio-political context changes in clinical practice. However, a lack of social media and technology ethics was identified, and the universities need to reform their curriculum to include these in the face of the fourth industrial revolution. The interviews revealed that the allocation of ethics topics within the curriculum, teaching approaches, the amount of time dedicated to ethics, and the assessment methods are highly variable across the university programs. The educators also employed various teaching approaches, ethics integration into clinical practice, and it is not taught as a cross-cutting theme through the curriculum. </p><p dir="ltr">The recommendations are that the transgression case studies are to be used in the curriculum design to develop ethics topics that will assist in curbing poor ethical behaviours. The universities are to include business ethics in the curriculum. Ethics is to be taught in all years of training, and it is to be assessed to emphasise its importance. The HPCSA is to develop minimum standards for ethics hours and the assessment thereof. The curriculum needs to be transformed to reflect Ubuntu/African perspectives, culture, and diversity of the communities served.</p>