Physiotherapy as an academic discipline – from the perspective of Nordic doctoral dissertations

Abstract

There are only a few studies focusing on the content of doctoral dissertations in the field of PT even though academic dissertations are important for shaping a discipline. The aim of this study was to explore and describe a paradigm and criteria for an academic discipline in Nordic doctoral dissertations written by physiotherapists. The study was based on content analysis of the abstracts in 418 doctoral dissertations conducted over three decades. A descriptive and retrospective research approach was used. The results show that the PT dissertations focus on clinical questions within a broad range of PT practise areas. They are mainly applied research studies with a quantitative approach, although qualitative and mixed methods are used. The dissertations are conducted in different academic faculties, however, mainly in medical and health sciences. Theoretical reflection about conceptual, ontological and epistemological issues is scarce. The concept analysis in the Swedish dissertations (n = 219) demonstrates a health- and function-oriented approach to reality. The results of this study indicate that PT as a discipline is clinically oriented and might be guided both by the implicit PT practise paradigm and by various scientific disciplines. Further theoretical reflections and studies about the theory of science in PT are needed.

Keywords:

• Physiotherapy discipline
• physiotherapy dissertations
• physiotherapy paradigm
• physiotherapy reality
• research view
• concept analysis

Acknowledgements

Catharina Broberg contributed as an expert in the analysis of concepts. Katie Eriksson served as a scientific advisor. Carina Fransman, Mia Roman and Gabriella Tengström participated in analysing selected parts of the data.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Notes

1 Iceland was not part of the study, because no information about dissertations written by Icelandic physiotherapists was available, although at least two dissertations written and presented in Swedish universities by physiotherapist from Iceland were included in the material.

2 In 2013, there were a total 51,371 professional practising physiotherapists in the Nordic countries; Iceland 550, Finland 13,368, Denmark 11,693, Norway 14,000 and Sweden 12,310. This means that the number of physiotherapists with a PhD’s degree represents about 1% of the PT population in the Nordic countries. Sweden has the largest part (3%) of PhDs in relation to the total number of physiotherapists (www.wcpt.org/member).