A scholarship named for me! Pat Yarbrough! Sometimes I still can’t believe it. After disbelief and surprise, I felt humbled and a deep sense of gratitude. This scholarship was established for $25,000. And was made anonymously. This poses a problem for me, because I don't know who to thank. The scholarship will always be special I know that the donor is female and a former student. So, I will thank all of my students, and to the former student who gave the scholarship, you have all honored me. I will never forget our time together. You are very special to me. My time at Georgia State will always be the best years of my life. It will always be special and I will always feel honored and think of you every time the scholarship is awarded, year after year.
Dr. Sujay Galen, Chairman of the Physical Therapy Department, asked me to layout the criteria and theme of the scholarship, I thought about this a lot. What kept coming up for me was ethics and morality in a leadership role.
We are living in a time when unrelenting economic and social pressures needs their educational institutions to be a resource and a rallying point for professional and personal renewal. We have come to a time when ethics needs to be a theme running through the entire curriculum. In the past, time limited the amount of attention that ethics could be included. The APTA code of ethics was covered and the topic of ethics was limited to that.
Today, In physical therapy, ethical issues are creeping up, such as charging for treatments that are not done, falsifying or changing documentation, following productivity goals measured by quality of billable units, truth telling, confidentiality, privacy, informed consent, and disrespecting the patients autonomy.
Students needs to have the moral strength and courage to solve ethical issues and moral distress. That is when one knows the right decision, the ethically correct action to take, but feels helpless and powerless to take it. They need to be able to stand against bureaucratic decisions that are unethical. They need to insist on serving on committees that set production goals and committees that deal with ethical concerns. Do they have the courage to pursue the right course of action? Do they have the moral strength to quit when ethical issues don't stop?
The educational experience must imbue the students with a strong sense of moral reasoning and ethics so that when they are confronted with an issue so that they can insist on a work place culture that supports therapists setting productivity standards, supporting each other, and the clinical facility emphasizing ethical practice and excellent clinical care.
While unethical behavior is not widespread, physical therapists are good people, students come to PT school with big hearts and a desire to serve. Nevertheless, the basic knowledge of the curriculum must be revised and recast as conditions change to promote ethical and moral reasoning.
And so the scholarship named after me will ask the prospective recipients to write a paper that will cover the topic of Ethics and Morality in Leadership in Physical Therapy.