Actionable companion · School leadership and instructional improvement

From leadership research to district action: Measuring readiness for disaster response in physiotherapy education: development and validation predisposition assessment tool

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

The increasing frequency of emergencies, disasters, and humanitarian crises underscores the need for a health workforce adequately prepared to respond across disaster management continuum. Within this context, physiotherapists play an essential role in post-disaster care, yet evidence on students’ readiness for emergency, disaster, and humanitarian action (EDHA) remains limited. This study aimed to develop and content-validate an assessment tool and examine physiotherapy students’ predisposition, perceived competence, and readiness to assume functional roles in EDHA contexts. A two-phase study was adopted. Phase 1 comprised instrument development, including a 12-item questionnaire organized into three conceptual domains assessing predisposition, perceived competence, and readiness to assume functional roles in EDHA contexts. Content validation was performed using a two-round expert panel process with 12 experts, and pre-testing. Phase 2, a cross-sectional design, involved administering the final questionnaire to 126 undergraduate physiotherapy students from six Portuguese higher education institutions. The instrument demonstrated excellent content validity (S-CVI/Ave = 0.98). Although a majority of students reported interest in EDHA contexts (61.9%), only 35.7% felt adequately prepared. Results from the assessment tool showed high self-reported interpersonal preparedness, with 96.8% of students rating empathy and 92.9% collaboration as “good” or “very good.” In contrast, 57.2% reported positive ratings for leadership. A substantial competence gap was observed in technical domains: 60.3% of participants considered themselves not or only slightly capable of delivering specialized rehabilitation training, and 42.1% reported low confidence in training peers to identify rehabilitation needs. Similarly, low perceived competence was reported in psychological first aid and burn management. Predisposition to work in disaster contexts did not differ significantly across academic years [ESSAlcoitão: χ2(2) = 0.287, p = 0.866; other institutions: χ2(2) = 0.200, p = 0.905]. Furthermore, 64.3% of students considered curricular preparation insufficient. By providing a validated instrument that captures a composite construct of predisposition, perceived competence, and functional role readiness, this study offers a tool for monitoring educational needs and evaluating the impact of curricular reforms. The identified readiness–competence gap reinforces the urgency of integrating structured, competency-based EDHA training within undergraduate physiotherapy curricula, thereby strengthening public health preparedness and contributing to more resilient health systems in the face of increasingly frequent emergencies and disasters.

A 90-day district inquiry

1. Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
2. Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
3. Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
4. Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Maria da Lapa Rosado; Cláudia Silva; Cristina dos Santos Cardoso de Sá. Measuring readiness for disaster response in physiotherapy education: development and validation predisposition assessment tool. Frontiers in Public Health (2026-06-01). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1814454

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.