Physical Therapists' Perceptions of Leadership across the Health Care Continuum: A Brief Report

To describe and compare Canadian physical therapists' perspectives on the importance of characteristics required for leadership in the workplace and in society and to explore the implications for the profession.

This quantitative, cross-sectional study used a web-based survey of members of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association (CPA) with a registered email address (n=6156). The perceived importance of leadership characteristics at the workplace level versus the societal level was examined using a Mann-Whitney U test, with the significance set at α=0.05.

A total of 1,511 respondents completed the questionnaire for a 24.5% response rate; they rated communication, professionalism, and credibility as the most important characteristics. For each of the 15 leadership characteristics, significantly fewer physical therapists chose the rating "extremely important" at the societal level than did so at the workplace level (p<0.001 for all characteristics).

Physical therapists consistently rate leadership characteristics as more important in the workplace than at the societal level. Future research should aim to guide understanding about the reasons for this difference in perceived importance of leadership characteristics across different contexts.