The mandate of the College as a health professions regulator is the protection of the public. One of the ways we work to ensure public safety is to offer resources and information to physical therapist registrants to support you in your delivery of quality physical therapy care and in your growth as a physical therapist.
We know that achieving and maintaining professional competence depends on many interrelated personal and professional factors. Our goal is to provide you with tools to reflect on and recognize the factors that may be impacting how engaged you are in your profession (which we know is liked to competence), and to offer resources to mitigate any risks to engagement that you identify.
We can help you enhance the quality of your practice so that you are the safe, competent, ethical physical therapist that the public expects.
Quality Practice
The puzzle pieces in this continuous loop of quality practice illustrate the actions you take and the tools, resources and support the College offers so that together, throughout your career, we ensure that you meet your regulatory obligations and will provide quality care to your clients.
Learning Opportunities
To support you in being a reflective life-long learner, we provide professional practice resources related to regulatory expectations, including webinars, publications, and topic-specific Advice to Consider articles. See Professional Practice Resources on our website.
The Professional Development activities and reflection are currently being piloted by the College. This opportunity was built on a structure that allows physical therapists to reflect on key areas that impact your ability to improve knowledge, skills and abilities relevant to your practice area and career stage. You may have participated in one of the pilots to provide us with feedback about the approach we’ve taken. Stay tuned for more details about when this will be implemented for all registrants.
Guidance
If you ever have a question about your professional practice, your regulatory obligations, or how to interpret a Standard of Practice or the Code of Ethical Conduct, our Professional Practice Advisors are available. You can reach them by phone, or by email at practicequestions@cptbc.org.
As physical therapists themselves, they understand real life practice. Our professional practice advisors understand the challenge sometimes of choosing the next best step with a client, an employer or a colleague in a difficult situation. You may be unsure how to meet your obligations as a registrant and need help to problem solve with someone who understands those obligations.
Personal & Professional Risks
Recognizing any personal and professional risks to competence and applying strategies to mitigate those risks are activities that every registrant should undertake. The College provides two tools to help you in this. Once a year, you are sent a link to complete the Annual Self Report (ASR) before you begin registration renewal. The ASR is a series of questions about you and your practice – we don’t see your answers. When you’ve completed the ASR you receive a personal Risks and Supports report. It explains the risks you’ve identified which may impact your ability to practice competently, and some supports that are available to you to mitigate those risks.
The College has also developed a Supportive Workplace Self-Reflection (SWS) tool that will be available to registrants that you can complete at any time in the year. Some of you may have been pilot testers for this tool; it consists of a series of questions about you and your workplace. Again, we don’t see your answers. When you’ve completed the SWS, you will receive a report about the risks you’ve identified within your workplace which may impact your ability to practice competently. Identifying and reflecting on those risks is the first step in addressing them.
These two tools – the Annual Self Report and the Supportive Workplace Self-Reflection – each offer an opportunity to reflect on your personal and professional situation in relation to competence and engagement risks and to consider next steps to reduce those risks.
Data Informed Resources
When the College develops tools, resources and information for registrants, we rely on data gathered from a number of sources to inform the content. For example, even though we don’t see your individual results on the ASR and the SWS, we do receive aggregate reports that help us understand which risks registrants are identifying most or least frequently.
Our Professional Practice Advisors identify trends in the questions they receive so that we can prepare written resources and webinars focussed on the needs of the registrants. We monitor any trends in the complaints that we receive. If we notice more complaints of a particular nature, we work to develop resources to increase registrant awareness and knowledge of that topic so that complaints are reduced.
When we update our Standards of Practice we use data collected from registrants and the complaints program to identify where language needs to be clarified or where we need to provide more details.
Maintaining Competency
Professional competence is not something that you achieve once at the time of entry-to-practice and then no longer have to consider as you practice physical therapy throughout your career. We know that a safe, competent and ethical physical therapist is one who is healthy, who participates in regular professional development, and who works in a supportive practice environment. Your regulatory obligations as a registered physical therapist require you to:
- comply with the Standards of Practice and the Code of Ethical Conduct (Bylaws Part 81, PDF)
- attend to your own health and well-being (Code of Ethical Conduct, PDF)
- actively pursue continuous lifelong learning to maintain competence in existing and emerging areas of your physical therapy practice (Standard of Practice: Continuing Competence, PDF)
- commit to lifelong learning and excellence in practice (Code of Ethical Conduct, PDF)
To be a safe, competent and ethical physical therapist it is important not only to know of the College’s professional practice resources and the tools we’ve developed, but also to apply them in your practice, your workplace and in your personal life. Let’s work together to ensure the public receives safe, ethical and competent care from physical therapists in British Columbia.
