“Blooming” Transformation in a Student Run Free Clinic
Purpose
The purpose of this presentation is to describe specific strategies to integrate the didactic curriculum into a Student Run Free Clinic (SRFC) throughout the continuum of a DPT program utilizing Bloom’s taxonomy. We will include specific examples from our PT/OT clinic. We will also present preliminary data collected about the effectiveness of the coursework integrated in the SRFC and influencing student clinical practice while on clinical practicums
Methods/Description
SRFC’s are becoming more prevalent amongst physical therapy schools across the nation. As the number of SRFC’s grows, faculty become increasingly tasked with integrating curriculum into the clinics in order to foster clinical reasoning and reinforce the learning of clinical skills. SRFC’s offer a way to translate the classroom into the clinic as an integrated clinical experience. Faculty can design student experiences at the SRFC that reinforce the didactic information from the classroom to the clinic. There is evidence that these pre-clinical experiences at a SRFC can foster student clinical reasoning and the development of clinical skills. Once the DPT student leaves campus for their clinical practicums the students may experience significant variations in practice. These variations may lead to difficulty translating what was taught in the classroom into the clinic and lead to wider variations in clinical practice post graduation. The goal of our curricular experiences is to foster student learning by transforming a SRFC from a purely altruistic endeavor, to an educational platform to decrease the variability of clinical practice when students are out on clinical practicums. We propose that this can be done by Integrating strategic didactic material into the SRFC along the continuum of the DPT program following Bloom’s taxonomy.
Results/Outcomes
One assignment was piloted to determine if the educational strategy was effective. The DPT class of 2014 and 2015 classes answered 2 questions on an exit survey in regards to a specific activity integrated into the SRFC. The 2015 class compared to the 2014 class reported significantly greater usage of both standardized outcome measures and intensity training. Specifically, the usage of standardized outcome measures increased from a median of 51-75% of the time to a median of 76-99% of the time (p=0.03). The use of evidence related to intensity training increased from a median of 25-50% of the time to a median of 51-75% of the time
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: The Pursuit of Excellence in Physical Therapy Education
This presentation demonstrates the effectiveness of several instructional strategies geared TOWARD integrating classroom to the clinic using a SRFC as an educational platform. The SRFC can effectively “Bloom” in order to transform physical therapy education.
References
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