Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive study was to analyze physical therapists ' clinical problem solving and compare the results with physicians ' clinical problem solving. Ten skilled physical therapy clinicians were observed as they performed an initial interview with a patient. Their performance was audiotaped and later analyzed. The therapists defined their problem lists and developed treatment plans early in the interview, as they gathered data. This clinical problem-solving sequence is comparable to a method reported in the literature that is used by physicians. This model of clinical problem solving based on actual performance of clinicians can be used to train physical therapy students and, perhaps, to refine clinical evaluation skills. Key Words: Education, Physical therapy. The question of how physicians solve patient problems has been intensively studied in recent years. Barrows and Tamblyn called medical problem solv-ing the clinical reasoning process and described it as the scientific method of clinical medicine.1 The basic purpose of the studies of both Barrows and Tamblyn1 and Elstein and associates2 was to describe the clinical reasoning process physicians use to make diagnos-tic and therapeutic decisions. In addi-tion, Barrows and Tamblyn described a model for teaching this clinical reason-ing process to medical students. The purpose of this study was to ex-amine how a selected group of clinical physical therapists evaluated patients and made decisions about clinical prob-lems and treatment plans. The results of this descriptive study were then com-pared with the descriptive studies of Bar-rows and Tamblyn1 and Elstein and as-sociates.2 The research question was asked, Do clinical physical therapists use a clinical reasoning process comparable to the clinical reasoning process de-scribed for physicians? If the answer was yes, then physical therapy educators have a teaching model in the Barrows and Tamblyn book that can be useful in physical therapy education with mini-mal translation. Physical therapy edu-