Physical Therapist Supervision of an Occupational Therapy Doctoral Experience on Pain Neuroscience Education
Background and Purpose: The purpose of this project is to explore the potential educational and clinical benefits to both a local PT school & PT clinic through a physical therapist serving in the novel primary role of clinical supervisor to an occupational therapy student during their doctoral experience.
Case Description: Occupational Therapy doctoral students are required to complete a 4 month doctoral experience that does not need to involve any clinical care but instead could focus on helping a clinician or educator complete a large project with only minimal time investment on the part of the supervisor. Projects could range from assisting to reformat lectures, creating a clinic marketing plan, assistance in applying for grants, and assistance with IRB approval and while typically supervised by an OT can be supervised by other health professionals. A physical therapist clinician, who also teaches pain neuroscience content in a local physical therapy school, agreed to trial being a supervisor of an OT doctoral experience centered around group patient education classes on pain neuroscience from January – April of 2019.
Outcomes: During the rotation, the OT student performed a thorough literature review on pain neuroscience, assisted in applying for a grant for class supplies, taught the pain neuroscience patient classes, developed materials for class marketing, redesigned outcome measure tracking worksheets, assisted as on-site staff for a continuing education course from Dr. Adriaan Louw, applied for study IRB approval, and helped co-lead entry level physical therapy labs on the topic of pain neuroscience. The class format consisted of 2 three-hour sessions offered monthly based on the work of Louw et al. and they were taught primarily by physical therapist clinicians with assistance from a psychologist, a pain management physician, and the occupational therapy student. The OT student was able to streamline the referral and scheduling process for the class as well as provide a valuable multidisciplinary perspective to physical therapy students on occupational therapy’s role in managing chronic pain during her instruction at the PT school.
Discussion:
Current IASP recommendations on educating students about pain revolve around the benefits of a multidisciplinary approach to pain treatment. Often, clinical instructors in non-hospital settings struggle to provide multidisciplinary experiences for PT/PTA students due to busy clinic schedules and lack of opportunity. Additionally, clinical Instructors are often hesitant to take on additional PT/PTA students for clinical instruction due to decreased time available to devote to clinic marketing and process improvement. Likewise, PT & PTA educators often must delay needed grant writing, lecture updating due to their busy schedules. Supervising an OT doctoral student allows clinical educators to efficiently accomplish large projects that need focused attention in an efficient manner while also exposing OT & PT/PTA students to each other’s area of expertise. PT & PTA educators and clinicians with ambitious but time consuming clinical/research projects should consider supervising an OT doctoral experience.
Both PT/PTA educators and PT/PTA clinicians could benefit greatly from the 4 months of student project focused work from an OT doctoral student on project. Rotations require minimal time investment on the part of the supervisor, and allow a great deal of focused work to be completed without the need for student funding. The high demand for OT doctoral experience sites is due to a dearth of established doctoral sites and the requirement for all doctoral OT students to complete a doctoral experience. In short, reaching out to a local OT school and pitching them on a potential project can be a valuable tool for PT/PTA clinicians & educators to accomplish their goals while providing a great multidisciplinary experience for OT students.