Doctor of Physical Therapy - Controversies

Controversies

The use of the title doctor by physical therapists and other non-physician health care professionals is controversial. In a letter to The New York Times, the president of the American Physical Therapy Association responded:

"To provide accurate information to consumers, the American Physical Therapy Association has taken a proactive approach and provides clear guidelines for physical therapists regarding the use of the title "Doctor." These guidelines state that physical therapists, in all clinical settings, who hold a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree (DPT) shall indicate they are physical therapists when using the title "Doctor" or "Dr," and shall use the titles in accord with jurisdictional law."

The DPT degree has been described as an example of "credential creep" or degree inflation in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Citing concerns that the DPT, and similar professional doctorates in areas such as occupational therapy, do not meet the standards of traditional doctorate degrees, the journal states: "The six-and-a-half-year doctor of physical therapy, or DPT, is rapidly replacing a six-year master's degree ... The American Physical Therapy Association ... has not set separate requirements for doctoral programs. To be accredited they need only meet the same requirements as master's programs."

Critics question whether the rigor of the physical therapy curriculum and the current scope of practice warrant the conferral of a professional degree similar to that characteristic of medicine, dentistry, or veterinary medicine. Proponents counter that the existing curricula are "victims of 'curricular inflation'." As Rothstein and Moffat noted, the previous master's and even baccalaureate curricula rival that of most other doctoral programs, and these curricula often require more than the typical 72 credits mandated for a doctoral degree. The 2000 Fact Sheet from APTA reported that the mean number of credits required for the professional phase of the typical baccalaureate program was 83.0 credits and that the typical master's degree program required 95.5 credits. As of 2009 the typical number of prerequisite credits was 114.2 and the total number of professional credits was 116.5 for a total of 230.7 credit hours. This is well in excess of the typical 72 professional credits mandated for a doctoral degree. Additional credit hours may be earned in residency and fellowship as well. Threlkeld et al suggest that the scope of existing physical therapy curricula already matches that of a professional doctorate, further submitting that students of a well-defined DPT program will have earned the right to be recognized with the doctoral title.