Three perspectives on physical therapist managerial work

The nature of managerial work in the commercial sector has not been studied since the 1970s, and little is known about the work of managers in the health care sector. In this study, the perceived importance of managerial role and skill categories among 3 groups of physical therapists were studied to better understand the work priorities of physical therapist managers.

Two groups of subjects were physical therapist managers in hospitals or private practices. A third group consisted of faculty members in professional physical therapist education programs.

Respondents (n=343) rated the importance of 75 managerial activities. Responses related to 16 predetermined work categories were placed in rank order by group. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to identify differences among groups.

All groups identified communication, financial control, entrepreneur, resource allocator, and leader as the 5 most important categories and rated technical expert and figurehead as least important. The MANOVA showed differences between faculty members and private practice managers in 15 work categories, between hospital-based managers and private practice managers in 9 categories, and between faculty members and hospital-based managers in 8 categories.

Work setting appears to have an impact on level of importance placed on managerial work categories. The strongest candidates for "universal" physical therapist managerial work categories were communication, financial control, and resource allocator.