Getting Your Head Out of the Books: Collaborative and Experiential Learning Across a DPT Curriculum
Academic programs face an ever-growing challenge to ensure that students are ready to enter the clinic. Preparing future physical therapists for the demands of the contemporary practice environment is challenging. In addition, clinical sites express concerns that students are not ready for the clinic when beginning their rotations. As educators, we know that students rapidly assimilate book knowledge, but applying that knowledge in clinical scenarios is a leap students often struggle to make. This session will focus on successful strategies to move students from book learning to application of this knowledge for safe and effective clinical reasoning. The implementation of these strategies has led to positive feedback from clinical sites related to student readiness, as well as improved student perception of readiness for clinical practice. The speakers will present evidence of these outcomes and describe the use of peer and near-peer teaching, residency and fellowship programs, experiential learning, and a student-led clinic as some of the possible methods for accomplishing these goals. Presenters will focus on the progression of each of these teaching methods throughout the program, as well as the benefits of including both patients and local clinicians in the classroom and lab settings.