I am 3 months away from my first clinical education experience as a student PT, but worry and doubt has already set in for my class. One of the biggest worries my class has is they do not feel prepared to go out into the clinic. Again, I have not experienced the current clinical education model, so I am hesitant to comment. I do, however, have experience with another type of education model that I found to be very beneficial. This experience comes from undergrad where I majored in Athletic Training. During this program, I had class from 8-12 everyday, and then I went to the sport I had been assigned to that semester and worked with a staff athletic trainer from 1 until whenever the practice or game was over. It was a lot of time and work, but I loved this model because everyday I could take what I learned in lecture that morning and apply that learning to a real patient. Tulsa Community College is working on using this type of model for their Physical Therapist Assistant program, in addition to the more traditional model of sending students out to various clinics. Suzanne Reese, the professor at TCC behind this idea, feels a professor and student run clinic, " would create a learning environment students couldn't get anywhere else: students and professors working together to treat patients." Nothing against community colleges, but if they can figure out how to provide the best learning environments for their developing professionals, shouldn't our major PT schools be able to do the same? It would take some work, but I'm sure students would be willing to help out if it means better facilitation of their learning.
Friday, March 21, 2008
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2 comments:
Hey great work with starting and keeping up with the blog... on this topic I want to let you know about Nazareth College in New York. Their PT program started an interdisciplinary clinic (http://www.naz.edu/dept/physical_therapy/on_site_clinic.cfm). I attended a presentation by their faculty and students at CSM '07 in Boston where they described their clinic. It is part of a business class they have where each student is assigned an element of running the pro-bono clinic. The students seemed to be very pleased with this model. I have their poster on a study focused around this clinic in .PPT if anyone is interested.
Also, there are many schools that I have heard of with a similar approach to the ATC model you described. Students would go one day a week to a clinic to observe pretty much throughout their time in classes.
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Bo
http://studentpt.blogspot.com
I'm a 2nd year on the west coast with our long internships starting in six months. Our class in general is worried as well. We got an email from a 3rd year that assuaged our fears at least for a week, stating she felt very unprepared and that she was actually very prepared (we don't currently have a student clinic, although we are working on it as an option). There is a school an hour south of us that has a clinic, and I have heard good things about the clinic and their students coming out of there. For me, I think a part of it is not trusting that I know what I have been taught, and remembering that it is still part of the educational experience - it isn't a job, but an internship. Thankfully our CI's seem to be impressed, but it would definitely assuage our fears if we had more regular real practice! It will be interesting to see in the coming years how the clinical education model changes for the profession, and it would be interesting to see if there is any research out there (EB teaching?) comparing programs like yours and ours versus Nazareth College and others as far as our knowledge and abilities.
David
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