Abstract

The professionalization of the physiotherapist profession is a dynamic process in Poland, which can be seen in the number of academic organizational units, formation of PTF, and development of academic research. The study aimed to analyse the process of professionalization among a group of final semester Master’s degree students of Polish university-level schools of different educational profiles.1942 second year Master’s degree students took part in the study. 1600 students were qua­lified to the statistical analysis: 570 PM students, 464 PWF students, and 566 IP students. Voluntary and anonymous que­stionnaire studies. The questionnaire was developed by the authors and comprised 74 questions. STATISTICA 10.0 program (Warsaw Medical University license) and the following non-parametric statistical tests: Chi-square, Kruskall-Wallis, and Mann-Whitney U (p<0.05).Only 6% of students engaged themselves in the activity of a Student Research Society (SRS) (p<.000). Only 28% of students actively took part course in a scientific conference (p<0.834). As little as 18% of students actively parti­cipated in a research study/research project (p<.000). The vast majority of students declared that they did not publish any article. 40% of the students declared participation in additional occupational courses. The vast majority of students had found out about the courses from the Internet (H=7.896, p<0.019) and declared that they would like to get objective infor­mation on the courses during their university classes (H=0.247, p<0.883). 1. University-level should develop programmes to pick up outstandingly talented individuals in order to provide them with an individual path of scientific development and build closer tights between these graduates and the school in the future. 2. Physiotherapy students seem to have a practical attitude towards the post-graduation training, which is more oriented to the content and usefulness and less oriented to temporary trends in physiotherapy. 3. There is an urgent need that university-level schools educating prospective physiotherapists develop educational programmes which would deal to a greater extend than it is at present with modern methods used in physiotherapy and which would constitute specific guidebooks in which students would be able to find information on the best parallel and post-graduate directions of further studies.

Key words:

professionalization, certified occupational courses, scientific work, postgraduate education