Abstract

Background. In Poland at present, physiotherapy studies are offered at three types of school: medical universities, universities of physical education, and schools not specialising in either the medical sciences or physical education. The aim was to compare the perception of the physiotherapist profession by first-year students of different types of universities. Material and methods. The study sample comprised 1145 1st year BA programme students from eleven schools in Poland. The study utili-sed the diagnostic poll method – a questionnaire, which comprised three parts. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used along with the median test and the Chi-squared test (p<0.05). Results. Most students stated that the professional status of physiotherapists is lower than that of doctors (above 52%), but is higher than that of nurses (above 70%). 92% of the students believed that physiotherapists and physicians should work together as partners (p=NS). The vast ma-jority (70%) of the students believed that the physiotherapist profession is related to medicine rather than physical education. Conclusions. 1. The educational orientation of the university did not influence first-year students’ perception of their futurę profession in this study with most of the surveyed stating that physiotherapist is a medical profession. 2. In the light of the findmgs of foreign authors, there is a ne-ed to carry out a study in Poland that would address the issue of the position of the physiotherapist in the therapeutic team in relation to the doctor and the team nurse as well as the other members of the team: dietitian, psychologist and occupational adviser.

Key words:

medical education, physiotherapy, type of university, perception of the profession