APTA Core Values Assignment - Physical Therapy Ethics

This assignment delves into the core values of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). The student analyzes the seven core values: professionalism, accountability, compassion and caring, excellence, social responsibility, altruism, and integrity. The assignment explores each value, providing indicators and examples of their application in professional practice. The student addresses potential challenges in adhering to these values, such as resource constraints and patient needs prioritization, and describes strategies for navigating these difficulties, including prioritizing patient needs and responding to feedback efficiently. The student reflects on personal experiences, demonstrating how actions align with the APTA core values. References to support the analysis are also included.

Running head: APTA CORE VALUES 1
APTA Core Values Assignment
Student’s Name
University

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APTA Core Values Assignment:
Question one: .Write out what consider to be any additions, deletions, and/or clarification
of the definitions. Are there core values are missing?
No core value is missing, has been added or deleted. APTA provides seven core values that have
been listed.
Question two: Write down at least 5 indicators for each core value
1. Professional duty
This is the commitment to meet individual duties for providing effective healthcare services to
patients. Serve the profession and at the same time lead to positive influences in health.
Indicators
Provision of optimal care, facilitating achievement of goals, preserving safety and confidentiality
of patients, mentoring others and taking pride in professionalism.
2. Accountability
This is accepting responsibility for diversity in roles, obligations and actions that for self-
regulation and any other behavior that positively influences client outcomes and the health needs
of the society.
Indicators
Meeting patient needs, adequate response to feedback, accepting outcomes of ones actions,
following the ethical requirements and accurate communication to others.
3. Compassion and caring
This identifying with all client needs while caring is being concerned, empathetic and
considering the needs of others.
Indicators

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Understanding individual patient perspective, advocating for patient’s needs, effective
communication, designing interventions that are congruent to patient needs and focus on
achievement of greatest well-being of the patient
4. Excellence
This is the professional practice of consistently using the theory and knowledge gathered in the
discipline, integrating judgment and using the client’s perspective to resolve the challenges that
are being faced.
Indicators
Use of multiple evidence sources for professional practice, promotion of high quality health,
professional humility, and consistence use of evidence based approaches and tolerance for
ambiguity.
5. Social Responsibility
This is promoting mutual trust that exist between the professional and the larger public that the
professional serves to meet the larger public needs for achieving wellness.
Indicators
Advocating for the health and wellness needs of society, promotion of cultural competence,
promotion of social policy, promotion of community volunteerism and participation in the
achievement of societal health goals
6. Altruism
This is regarding the interest of the patients/clients by assuming personal responsibility and
placing the needs of the patient first and as a priority.
Indicators

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Provision of pro-bono services, placing patient needs higher than practitioner needs, meeting the
needs of the underserved communities, completing patient care based on the required needs.
7. Integrity
This is adhering to professional and ethical standards, being fair to what one says or does and
being open about what one does.
Indicators
Abiding by the set professional rules and standards, articulation of stated ideals and professional
values, judicial use of power, resolution of dilemmas with respect and taking responsibility for
actions.
Question three: Select any 2 core values from the list. Provide a specific example from your
professional experience, where you faced a challenged with respect to the core value and
how your actions illustrated a commitment to that value.
One core value that has been challenging for me to meet is the professionalism value
especially facilitation of achievement of personal goals for functional wellness and health. Here
it becomes challenging because sometimes the resources are constrained or there is lack of
adequate time to meet the individual needs of each patient. Patient-centered approaches focus on
ensuring that the professional priorities the needs of the patient (Cahalin, 2012). To solve this
challenge, I prioritized all the needs of the patient and picked the ones that are highly required to
start with them. This ensures that the priorities needs are met despite constrain of resources.
Another value is accountability which presents two challenges. The first challenge is
responding to patients/client’s goals and needs. Since the needs of the patients are many, it
becomes challenging to achieve all the goals since each patient needs to be served. This means
that priority care is what matters, thus I mostly focus on the priority needs of the patient while

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other needs can be referred to another practitioner or nurse for assistance (McGinnis, Guenther,
& Wainwright, 2016). In most cases, a practitioner is supposed to respond to different feedbacks
that arise thus it becomes challenging to respond to all such feedback since there is limited time.
This makes it difficult since you cannot filter to determine which one is important and which one
is not. In most cases, the best way I have solved this is responding to feedback on a rolling basis.
This means that when feedback is received, I immediately respond on it to save time.

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References
Cahalin, L. P. (2012). The Linda Crane Lecture Professionalism & Core Values in Physical
Therapy: Lessons Learned From Linda Crane. Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy
Journal, 23(2), 30–39.
McGinnis, P. Q., Guenther, L. A., & Wainwright, S. F. (2016). Development and Integration of
Professional Core Values Among Practicing Clinicians. Physical Therapy, 96(9), 1417–
1429.