How Does an Integrated Clinical Experience Change a Student's Preparedness for a Long-Term Clinical Experience?
Purpose/Hypothesis: The design of the integrated clinical experience (ICE) rivals that of the traditional clinical experience as it relates to the contribution of the classroom setting to students’ learning. While the traditional long-term clinical experience delivers complete immersion into a practice setting, the integrated clinical experience aligns didactic activity within the clinical setting for shorter periods of time. This would potentially add relevance to what students are learning in the classroom and introduce the students to clinical opportunities. In this study, students participated in a four-hour group active-learning project completed in the acute care setting with a physical therapy practitioner. This study was designed to assess the effect of the integrated clinical experience on students’ clinical preparedness for an acute care setting and to assess their overall perceptions of this clinical setting after this experience.
Number of Subjects: 76
Materials and Methods: In Phase 1, subjects for our study were collected from a sample of convenience by asking all students in the entry-level physical therapy education program at Georgia State University and clinical instructors (CIs) from nearby acute care clinical sites to complete an online electronic survey. Separate parameters were set within the survey, so that the participating subjects would be asked different questions depending on whether they were a student or a clinical instructor. In addition, students were asked different questions based on which cohort they belonged to (Class of 2019, 2020 or 2021). In Phase 2, surveys were distributed and collected. In Phase 3, Qualtrics software was used to run a statistical analysis and clinically significant chi square values were noted. Themes among the qualitative data that was collected from the survey responses, as well as the reflective comments shared after the ICE, were the major focus in this study.
Results: Of the surveys that were distributed, 76 were completed and returned, with only 9 of the respondents being CIs. For the class of 2020 and 2021, 84% of the students said via the Qualtrics survey that they thought the ICE was valuable. Similarly, 55% of the 2020 and 2021 class surveyed, agreed with the statement “I believe that the ICE helped prepare me for a long-term clinical experience in the acute care setting”. With 60% of 2020/2021 surveyed cohort saying the “ICE improved their confidence with patient interaction and IP communication.” However, 60% of this same cohorts stated, “I did not think the ICE changed their perceptions of acute care.”
Conclusions: Most students indicated that the acute care ICE was beneficial and were able to learn from this experience. Additionally, the ICE generated some interest among some students to seek long-term acute care clinical experience opportunities and even expressed interest in returning to the acute care facility to gain more exposure. However, many factors go into students' like/dislike and notions of certain clinical settings in physical therapy. For some, the one 4-hour section was not enough to change students' preconceived notions on what acute care physical therapy is like. Creating more ICE opportunities not only would increase exposure and learning, but it could spark more interest in pursuing this clinical setting.
Clinical Relevance: Discovering the most effective ways to increase students’ preparedness for long-term clinical rotations, especially those in the acute care setting, is crucial to our future success as a profession. If students feel more confident going into long-term rotations then they will be able to get more out of the experience. While the didactic portion of the curriculum is important for the physical therapy student, clinical experience is irreplaceable when it comes to preparedness to practice as an entry level physical therapist. Integrated clinical experiences are definitely a way to supplement the learning experience and to improve students’ success during their long-term clinical experiences.