Congruency between Student and Clinical Instructor Clinical Performance Instrument Ratings through the Clinical Education Curriculum
Purpose:
To examine the progression of congruency between student self-assessment and Clinical Instructor (CI) ratings on the final Clinical Performance Instrument (CPI), for the first vs. the last clinical experience (CE)
Methods/Description:
De-identified data for the first and last clinical experience, for one class of DPT students (N=57), was analyzed. Differences between the final scores for the student and the clinical instructor, for each of the 18 CPI items, were calculated. Repeated measures ANOVA were calculated to examine the average difference between CI and student ratings for the two clinical experiences. Students were categorized as scoring themselves higher than, the same as, or lower than their CI, and the percentage of students in each category were calculated. Chi-square statistics were calculated to examine differences in the percentage of students in each category for the two clinical experiences.
Results/Outcomes:
Average values for the differences between the CI and the student were larger for the first clinical experience than the last experience for each of the 18 CPI items. There was a statistically significant difference in the percentage of students in the three categories for each of the items, with more students showing higher congruence with the CI rating in the last experience. More students tended to rate themselves lower than the CI in the first experience than the last experience, and more students rated themselves higher than their CI in the last experience than in the first one.
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme:
In comparing the results on the final CPI between the first and the last CE, the number of students who scored themselves the same as their CI increased and those that scored themselves lower than their CI decreased. This may indicate that as the students progress through the clinical education curriculum, their ability to self-reflect increases and their confidence improves. Conversely, the number of students who scored themselves higher than their CI increased in the last experience. This might reflect a lack of confidence during the first clinical experience and overconfidence in their last experience. Of the 18 items in the CPI, Professionalism and Clinical reasoning showed the greatest increase in congruency between the student and the CI rating by the time that the student reached the final clinical experience. Further studies are needed in the area of student confidence and self-reflection in order to provide physical therapist students with the necessary tools to become reflective practitioners.