Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has a doctorate of physical therapy program that they would like to be able to attract more people to. One way to do that, would be creating a cost of living adjustment scholarship fund.
Dr. Deborah Edwards, regional dean of the Doctorate of Physical Therapy program in Odessa and assistant program director for the entire program for TTUHSC, said the DPT program matriculates 72 students. Thirty-six stay in Lubbock; 18 go to Odessa; and 18 go to Amarillo.
“We always have three cohorts in Odessa, so that’s going to give us 54 doctoral students every year,” Edwards said.
Currently, there are 19 doctorate of physical therapy programs in Texas that are accredited by the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education. There is a 20th program that is a candidate for accreditation, so there will be 20 in Texas.
“In order to grow our cohort size, we have to receive approval through CAPTE and it’s important that we stick to CAPTE’s guidelines because in order for a student who graduates from our program to get their license to practice we have to be in good standing with CAPTE and we have to be an accredited school. So in order for us to grow the program, we would have to show CAPTE that we have the ability to support growth in this area with clinical sites for that third year. That’s really our biggest difficulty is getting clinical sites,” Edwards said.
“… A lot of our students end up needing to leave the area in order to do their clinical rotations,” she added.
She noted that the cost of living in the Permian Basin also is a “bit of a barrier.”
“One of our goals here in the Permian Basin is to start a cost of living adjustment scholarship fund because right now if there were students looking, let’s just say they just want to go to Tech, they look at Odessa and they look at Amarillo and they look at Lubbock. We have the highest cost of living here, so one of the only ways that we can really attract those students to come here is to offer scholarships. I would say most people … 99 percent of students who are on this campus have a significant amount of scholarship and that’s kind of the only way we can get them to stay in an area that to a college student doesn’t have a lot of allure compared to being Lubbock where’s there’s football games, or even being in like the DFW where there’s concerts (and) things like that,” Edwards said.
She added that TTUHSC does a good job with its interview system when students come to Odessa. They’re shown the new academic building, students praising the small cohort size and being very family oriented and supportive of them getting through the doctoral program.
“We have kind of a difficult little niche here in Odessa because we have a great product. I would say that the product is getting a doctoral degree at a tuition level which is a state tuition level instead of a lot of the other DPT degrees at private institutions that are a lot more expensive where their debt load is higher,” Edwards said.
But they also look at the cost of living, which can be $5,000 or $6,000 more than if they choose the Lubbock or Amarillo campuses.
“That is the No. 1 goal being in this role as a regional dean. I’ve talked with our fundraising experts on the main campus and looked at the numbers for how much would it take for us to have a fund that basically evens the playing field, so if you want to come to Odessa you’re going to get enough scholarship (money) that it’s not going to cost you more because of the cost of living compared to being at other schools in the region. We’ve got a school in San Angelo. There’s a school in Abilene. We’ve got the campuses in Lubbock and in Amarillo. All of those have a cheaper cost of living, so my hope is that we’re able to eventually get to where we’re able to provide a solid cost of living scholarship adjustment so that it is more attractive to get students here,” Edwards said.
She also provided some history of the physical therapy profession.
“The physical therapy profession was originally a certification that came about during World War II and primarily rehabilitation post-polio victims. With the success that they had with those patient populations, that profession began growing from a certification to a bachelor’s program and then eventually it was a master’s program. There’s a couple different reasons that it became a doctoral program, but the first entry-level DPT degree was awarded in 1996 and that was by Creighton University (in Omaha, Neb.),” Edwards said.
Part of the reason for the progression to a doctoral program was because of the need for more primary care providers, especially in rural areas.
“There are a lot of states that have direct access where you can go to a physical therapist just like you can go to a chiropractor, or a podiatrist, or an optometrist. As a first contact, the goal of the doctoral program was to have all the therapists be educated enough to not only assess and treat issues that we could assess and treat but also to be able to recognize serious pathology that was emergent and needed to be referred back to medicine,” Edwards said.
As of 2008, Texas Tech University Health Sciences was the first program in Texas to award a DPT degree.
In 2016, their accrediting body, Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education, began requiring that all entry-level therapists get a doctoral degree.
“Primarily it was in order to increase access to professionals who had enough education to recognize and know where to refer, not only to support the patient with a musculoskeletal or a neuro issue, but know when something else was going on and they needed to go either to the emergency room or go back and see their primary care physician,” Edwards said.
She added that therapists treat patients throughout their lives.
Overall, she said, it’s meant to benefit patients so the providers can recognize whether a patient needs to be seen in medicine, or undergo rehabilitation, for example.
“We treat multiple systems and multiple diagnoses. As we have grown, our curriculum, our outcomes, have gotten a lot better. … Length of stay in hospitals has decreased with adding physical therapy to … routine care. So at this point in time, as an entry-level professional degree, I would say most of your healthcare practitioners that are primary or direct access have a doctoral degree,” Edwards said.
