Characteristics of physical therapy role models

This study examined the personal and technical characteristics used in an investigation of role modeling in physical therapy. Recently graduated physical therapists performed a forced-choice Q sort composed of 49 physical therapist characteristics to describe 1) themselves, 2) their model academic instructor, and 3) their model clinical instructor. A significant difference between the frequency of personal and technical characteristics placed in the Most Descriptive section resulted for the self sort. The 10 characteristics ranked by highest mean values were all personal for self sorts, the majority were personal for the clinical model and combined sorts, and were equally divided between personal and technical for the academic model sorts.