ENHANCING BLENDED-LEARNING AND IMPROVING LEARNING RESULTS TOWARDS PROFESSIONAL ETHICS IN THE PHYSIOTHERAPY DEGREE

Introduction:
Learning outcomes are fundamental at university, in order to promote student commitment and thus to the practice of an ethically responsible profession. The objectives of this project were: 1) To determine students’ learning outcomes towards their education in professional ethics, before starting the study; 2) To develop ethical competence by means of the proposed model.

Methods:
Subjects were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group. Learning outcomes towards professional ethics were analysed. Informed consent was obtained. A blended learning model to teach professional ethics, associated to the clinical internship, was specially worked out for the students of the third course of the Physiotherapy Degree signed up in the subject Clinical Stays III. A special syllabus online was elaborated, as well as working groups were created to perform in the classroom and discuss special ethical issues detected along practices with real patients and real work setting. The analysis of the tasks for the evaluation of the progressive acquisition of the ethical competence, was carried out by the application of rubrics to the different tasks. A quantitative study was performed and descriptive statistics of all outcomes was carried out. An alpha level of p<0.05 was used to determine statistical significance.

Results:
The average qualifications obtained by the students of the experimental group, in each of the learning activities that were designed for the development of the cognitive, procedural and attitudinal components of the ethical competence, show a progressive improvement in the student's qualifications. There were 282 ethical cases raised by students throughout the different activities, of which 186 were real cases. Of the 186 real cases, the most frequently reported were ethical problems; Then situations of moral stress and silence. The less frequent situations were moral dilemmas. Once the situations were analyzed, they were classified according to the principles or values that had been violated: professional responsibility, professional competence, beneficence, justice, autonomy, professional secrecy, respect for privacy, sincerity and discrimination

Conclusions:
Learning professional ethics by means of the proposed training model, improves physiotherapy learning outcomes in this subject. The blended training model of teaching-learning about professional ethics associated with clinical practice, designed for this study, develops ethical competence in Physiotherapy students.