Leading through innovation in laboratory teaching: A new twist on an old concept
Purpose: To describe a model for teaching psychomotor skills across content areas in a physical therapy curriculum with emphasis on motor learning principles, experiential learning and clinical reasoning.Methods/Description: [REDACTED] renewed its DPT curriculum by creating a cohesive laboratory learning environment that occurs each semester, termed Integrated Laboratory 1-6. These six laboratory classes include content from the clinical sciences courses being taught concurrently in a semester. Two faculty have been assigned as instructors of record for courses 1-3 and 4-6, respectively, as approximately 50% of their workload. The role of these faculty members is to coordinate with faculty teaching clinical sciences in a given semester to ensure the necessary breadth and depth of psychomotor content is included, create experiential learning opportunities that integrate skills across content areas and promote clinical reasoning skills in the context of the patient management model. This has helped faculty identify gaps and redundancies in the curriculum and facilitate distributed practice of skills to maximize student learning. Success of this model was measured through student outcomes on skills competency tests, end of semester practical examinations (Clinical Competence Performance Examinations, CCPE), APTA Clinical Performance Instrument (CPI) benchmarks and the National Physical Therapy Examination (NPTE).Results/Outcomes: Each student passed skills competency tests administered during semesters 1-6 given a maximum of three trials. Except for one student in semester 6, each student passed the CCPE administered at the end of each semester in one of three trials. Having been deemed safe and competent to progress into clinical education experiences, each student met expectations for performance as measured on the CPI including entry-level performance after each terminal experience. Qualitative data from students and clinical instructors on the CPI suggest that the integrated laboratory model for teaching psychomotor skills and clinical decision-making leads to successful preparation for clinical education and practice. Results from performance on the NPTE will be included following the July 2018 examinations.Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: Our Leadership Landscape: Perspectives from the Ground Level to 30,000 Feet: This innovative model for laboratory-based teaching of psychomotor skills across content areas led to achievement of expected student outcomes in both the didactic and clinical environments. Some advantages of this model include: 1) better integration of the clinical sciences and collaboration among teaching faculty; 2) more consistent student exposure to a comprehensive, wholistic approach to patient management; 3) increased participation of community clinicians as content experts, and 4) efficient use of student time and laboratory learning space. This indicates an integrated model can lead to successful student outcomes and is beneficial in managing resources while guiding studetns from an understanding of ground level skills to an appreciation of the 30,000 foot view of patient care.References: Aldridge M. Nursing students’ perceptions of learning psychomotor skills: a literature review. Teach Learn Nurs. 2017;12:21-27. doi:10.1016/j.teln.2016.09.002. Accessed January 15, 2018. Arthur W, Bennett W, Stanush P and McNell T. Factors that influence skill decay and retention: a quantitative review and analysis. 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