FİZYOTERAPİ VE REHABİLİTASYON EĞİTİMİ ALAN SON SINIF ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN İŞSİZLİK KAYGILARININ İNCELENMESİ

Purpose: With the increase in the number and quotas of physiotherapy and rehabilitation undergraduate programs in our country, employment problems have started to arise for students studying in this program. Our study was planned to examine the unemployment anxiety of physiotherapy and rehabilitation undergraduate students studying at state and foundation universities in Turkey according to university status and gender. Methods: Our research included 845 senior students (582 female, 263 male; age: 22.78±1.52) studying in the physiotherapy and rehabilitation undergraduate program of 10 universities from different regions in Turkey. After obtaining social-demographic information of undergraduate students, The Unemployment Anxiety Questionnaire was applied. Results: Unemployment anxiety scores of physiotherapy students participating in the study were obtained as 39.90±8.53 out of 70. It was observed that the unemployment anxiety (p=0.014), pessimism (p=0.001), desire to succeed (p=0.0001) and seeking solutions (p=0.0001) of the students studying at the state university were higher than the students at the foundation university. It was found that male students' desire to succeed was higher than female students (p=0.014). Academic achievement was found to have a positive correlation with unemployment anxiety (r=0.072), but a negative correlation with desire to succeed (r= -0.99) and optimism (r= -0.07). Conclusion: Our results obtained from the study showed that studying at a state university, male gender, and high academic achievement increase unemployment anxiety. We think that reasons such as low family income level, identification of a man as an individual responsible for supporting the family, and the idea of becoming a more acceptable person financially and spiritually with a high level of success in society may have increased the level of unemployment anxiety. We believe that initiatives aimed at increasing employment opportunities for physical therapists will reduce unemployment anxiety in this population.