Mindfulness Practices in Academic Physical Therapy Leaders: A Conceptual Framework

Research Objectives: rpose of this study is to understand how physical therapy academploy mindfulness practices. The research questions explored were: What are the educational, professional, and personal backgrounds of PDs? Do PDs employ interpersonal mindfulness practices utilizing the interpersonal mindfulness practices of the Interpersonal Mindfulness Scale (IMS)? Are there differences between PDs interpersonal mindfulness practices as a function of leadership style? Are there differences between PDs interpersonal mindfulness practices as a function of leadership frame? Hypothesis 1: PDs mean scores on the IMS will differ based upon leadership styles. Hypothesis 2: PDs mean scores on the IMS will differ based upon leadership frames.

Design: Correlational explanatory quantitative design. Feb-March 2024.

Setting: Academic Higher Education Institutions

Participants: PDs of physical therapist programs and physical therapist assistant programs in the United States.

Interventions: A survey was distributed to participants to 616 PDs. A conceptual framework was postulated connecting mindfulness to leadership.

Main Outcome Measures: The survey collected data about participant demographics, physical therapist and physical therapist assistant program information, participant leadership styles and frames, and the participant’s use of mindfulness practices as measured by the Interpersonal Mindfulness Scale (IMS) (Pratscher et al., 2018). The IMS consists of 27 statements assessing frequency of experiences as measured on a Likert scale from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always) (2018).

Results: There was a total of 133 respondents with a response rate of 19.3%. PDs indicated most hold academic doctoral and professional degrees; were female, middle aged, and Caucasian; & shared responsibilities of effective leadership, communication, program planning, collaboration, & program assessment. The programs mostly represented southern regions, suburban and urban areas, & public institutions. PDs self-reported utilizing interpersonal mindfulness practices as measured by the IMS. Their utilization of mindfulness practices on the four IMS subscales of presence, awareness, non-judgmental and non-reactivity did not differ based upon participant’s leadership style (transformational, transactional, or servant leadership), but did differ as a function of participant’s leadership frames of political, structural, and human resources. The data provided initial support for the conceptual framework.

Conclusions: This study provides information about PD’s personal, educational, professional traits and their program’s traits, & lends new insight as academic physical therapy leaders are practicing mindfulness as measured by the IMS scale. This may provide administrators with an avenue to explore how to best support their leaders with mindfulness practices, including both services and resources to foster their practice, as well as interventions including trainings to allow development of mindfulness skills.

Author(s) Disclosures: None.