Physiotherapists' pro-growth experiences in past and current workplaces: a cross-sectional study.
Koji Ikeda, Yasutomo Jono, Yoshiyuki Yoshikawa and 3 others
Workplaces where physiotherapists felt they grew most were rated clearly higher on strictness, diligence, honesty, and autonomy than their current workplaces.
The top growth experience was struggling with a patient relationship, not attending a course.
Key findings
1Eight climate items—excitement, strictness, honesty, openness, diligence, passion, cooperativeness, and autonomy—were rated significantly higher in the pro-growth setting than in the current workplace. Strictness (r = 0.56) and diligence (r = 0.51) showed the largest effects.
2Brightness/cheerfulness (p = 0.85) and warmth (p = 0.11) showed no significant difference between the pro-growth setting and the current workplace.
3The most commonly reported growth-promoting experience was struggling with physical therapy and the relationship with the patient (90 of 357, 25.2%), followed by successful physical therapy (52, 14.6%).
Still to come
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What it does not show
Cross-sectional self-report: participants recalled past workplaces, so memory and hindsight shape the ratings. Participants who rated both past and current climate within the same workplace were not excluded, so the comparison may partly reflect how the same place is perceived at different times rather than two different workplaces. No operational definition of 'self-growth' was given to respondents; they relied on a prior study's description of 'a sense of self-growth,' which may have been understood differently by each person. 73.7% of the sample was male, and all participants were Japanese physiotherapists, so the findings may not generalise to other genders, professions, or cultural settings. The study is correlational: it shows pro-growth settings are perceived differently, not that creating a strict or diligent environment will produce growth.
Declared interests
Funded by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Number JP21K02842), a Japanese government research council. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the lower current-workplace scores as evidence that today's workplaces are worse or that making a workplace 'strict' will produce growth. The authors explicitly state that lower scores should not be interpreted as a deterioration of climate, and the design is a one-time self-report comparison of retrospective perceptions, not a causal or interventional finding.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →