A formal written complaint may be filed with CAPTE in the format provided on the accreditation website at the address below. Complaints may not be submitted anonymously.
The Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education
Department of Accreditation
American Physical Therapy Association
1111 North Fairfax Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-1488
CAPTE will take action only when it believes the program may not be in compliance with: 1) Evaluative Criteria for Accreditation, 2) Statement on academic integrity related to program closure, or 3) Statement on academic integrity in accreditation. Copies of these documents can be obtained by contacting CAPTE at accreditation@apta.org, www.capteonline.org, or phone at 703-706-3245.
The Augusta University Department of Physical Therapy encourages any individual who is unhappy with their experience or encounter with any student, faculty or staff member of the Department of Physical Therapy to file a written complaint against the department or program. The Department takes complaints very seriously and will act upon any complaints in an expedient manner, should the complaint warrant action. Once a complaint has been made, the Department Chair will be directly involved in gathering information and addressing the complaint. The record of the complaint will be kept on file in the Department Chair’s files for a period of 5 years.
Complaints regarding the Department of Physical Therapy should be addressed to:
Augusta University
Chair, Department of Physical Therapy
987 St. Sebastian Way, EC 1312
Augusta, Georgia 30912-0800
We, the faculty and staff, believe that the success of our graduates requires a culture of excellence attained through mutual engagement of teacher and learner in a collegial environment. We strive to develop and implement educational experiences using evidence-informed principles that inspire talented and ambitious learners to grow into autonomous healthcare professionals. We are committed to creating an interactive learning environment with clear, concisely stated outcomes. We serve as role models by being reflective practitioners, contemporary clinicians, scholars, and innovative educators.
We believe that to provide the services necessary to meet the health care needs of society, physical therapy practitioners must be clinically competent, mature, self-directed, and lifelong learners who can function autonomously within a complex health care system and exhibit intellectual curiosity, openness, caring, and flexibility.
We believe that an educational program designed to provide practitioners to meet the physical therapy needs of society must reflect the views of people, society, and practitioners. Physical therapy practitioners must be open-minded individuals who critically analyze ideas, understand human nature, and have broad interests. A physical therapy program should be designed to provide exposure to all areas of the physical therapy profession and have the potential to develop these qualities in individuals.
We believe that professional education develops or enhances clinical competence, critical thinking, communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and the formulation of value systems consistent with the profession.
The two major components of the professional education curriculum are clinical and academic experiences. The two components should be planned and implemented to be interdependent and reinforce one another. We believe that clinical competence can only be verified in the clinical setting. The academic setting is designed to provide the information and theory base integrated and expanded in the clinical setting.
We believe the curriculum should be organized to integrate discrete subject matter concepts and stimulate problem-solving, self-awareness, and the development of professional values. We believe that a curriculum designed around a competency-based approach and organized around multi-modal learning experiences is most effective and efficient. (Competency-based means that learning experiences and evaluation are organized around the major performance behaviors that must be exhibited by the students at entry into the profession.) We believe that spiraling learning experiences throughout the curriculum enhance the acquisition, utilization, and retention of concepts and skills necessary for competent entry-level practice.
The teaching-learning activity is an interactive process requiring the teacher's and learners' active participation. In addition, we value individuality and diversity in thought and experiences and believe that a wide range of teaching methodologies should be utilized to meet the stated objectives of the educational experience.
The faculty believes that we are responsible for establishing acceptable performance levels within the scope of practice as defined by the profession. We are also responsible for evaluating learner performance and providing feedback regarding their performance. Evaluations should be used both as a teaching tool (informative evaluation) and a certifying tool (summative evaluation). The faculty believes that preliminary clinical competence should be evaluated across courses. A critical component of the evaluation process is self-evaluation, and it is the faculty's responsibility to facilitate the development of meaningful self-evaluation skills among the learners.
The faculty believes that we provide the learners with role models of scholarly practitioners, competent and up-to-date clinicians, researchers, and skillful educators. The faculty believes that we have the primary responsibility for establishing the learning environment in the classroom. The learners and the faculty share the responsibility for maintaining that environment. The faculty believes in balancing faculty obligations (professional, institutional, departmental, and personal) and availability to self, other faculty, and students. The control of that balance lies within the individual faculty member.
Learners have the ultimate responsibility for their own learning. This requires openness, making choices, accepting the consequences of those choices, soliciting, and providing constructive feedback/guidance, participating in experiences offered, evaluating their own experiences, and seeking help when needed. The qualities of the learners that the professional program will enhance or develop are professional competence, critical thinking, self-evaluation, self-reliance, sensitivity, clear communication, respect for self and others, lifelong learning, self-confidence, creativity, responsibility, accountability, caring, and curiosity.
As active participants and partners in the professional education experience, learners may be offered opportunities to participate in programmatic development, evaluation, and improvement within the Department.
