The Status of Acute Care Clinical Experiences in Physical Therapy Education: A Survey Report
Purpose: Physical therapists (PT) are licensed to practice in a wide variety of settings, including acute care. Acute care represents 11% of current physical therapy practice.1 In acute care practice, PTs must recognize and limit risk to patients who have medically complex conditions and possess the requisite competencies specific for acute care practice to successfully evaluate and treat patients.2 Every new physical therapy graduate is expected to achieve the well-defined core competencies for entry-level practice in acute care.3,4 One strategy to achieve clinical competency in acute care is through full-time clinical education experiences. However, in physical therapy education it is unclear if each PT student has access to a full-time clinical experience in the acute care setting. Our purpose was to examine the status of acute care physical therapy clinical education to determine the current availability of acute care clinical experiences for students.Methods/Description: A 14-item IRB approved survey was sent to the Directors of Clinical Education (n=230) at all accredited physical therapy programs across the US. Our survey included questions regarding acute care clinical and didactic education as well as program demographic information.Results/Outcomes: Participants from 97 programs completed the survey. From those programs, the percentage of recent graduates who completed a full-time clinical experience in acute care ranged from 11.8% to 100% (µ=75.6%) Overall, 41.4% of responding programs require their students to complete a full-time clinical experience in an acute care hospital setting. However, 87.7% of responding programs report having difficulty attaining full-time clinical placements in the acute care hospital setting compared to other clinical settings and half (49.5%) of all responding programs have an inadequate number of acute care hospital clinical sites for their placement needs. Regionally, there is a significant difference (p=<0.01) in the availability of acute care hospital clinical sites across the US. The majority of responding programs in the South Atlantic and East North Central regions do not have an adequate number of acute care hospital clinical sites to meet their program’s placement needs.Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: Our Leadership Landscape: Perspectives from the Ground Level to 30,000 Feet: There is great variability in physical therapy education programs across the US regarding the requirement and completion of full-time clinical experiences in acute care. Not all physical therapy graduates complete a full-time clinical experience in acute care, yet every graduate is expected to be competent to practice in acute care. Development of strategies to build resilience in academic and clinical environments needs to address the variability and limited access to full-time clinical experiences in acute care hospitals that exists across US accredited physical therapy programs.References: 1. American Physical Therapy Association. Physical Therapist Member Demographic Profile 2013. Physical Therapy Workforce Data Web Page. American Physical Therapy Association. http://www.apta.org/WorkforceData/DemographicProfile/PTMember/. Accessed March 29, 2018. 2. Gorman L, Wruble Hakim E, Johnson W, et al. Nation -wide acute care physical therapist practice analysis identifies knowledge, skills, and behaviors that reflect acute care practice. Phys Ther . 2010;90(10):1453-1467. doi:10.2522/ptj.20090385 3. Greenwood K, Stewart E, Hake M, et al. Defining Entry-Level Practice in Acute Care Physical Therapy Practice. J Acute Care Phys Ther. 2017;8(1):3-10. doi:10.1097/JAT.0000000000000048 4. PT Standards and Required Elements. Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education. http://www.capteonline.org/AccreditationHandbook/. Updated July 15, 2016. Accessed March 1, 2018.