Using Clinical Reasoning Research to Inform Practice: Knowledge Translation
Purpose: Interest in clinical reasoning (CR) has continued to grow and develop within the academic community of physical therapists. Early work by Christensen2 began to explore the development of clinical reasoning in student physical therapists. In the decade that has passed, Christensen, along with other physical therapist educators, have continued work to understand3-6 and assess clinical reasoning.7-9 The National Study on Excellence and Innovation in PT Education1 highlighted this in Recommendation 17: Develop a comprehensive, longitudinal approach to teaching, learning and assessment of clinical reasoning abilities. Simultaneously, a growing number of physical therapists are attempting to answer questions and provide future direction through educational research. Curricular and clinical innovations can be developed, implemented and revised, but the ability to assess our innovations is key to enhancing physical therapist education and the knowledge, skills and abilities of physical therapists in the future.
We must use research to inform practice, and allow practice to inform research. Designing and implementing educational research requires a set of skills that many academic and clinical educators do not readily possess. The purpose of this session is to share several educational research projects focused on clinical reasoning as models for demonstrating how to move research questions and the resulting evidence into physical therapy teaching in classroom, lab and clinic as a way to enhance learning, measure clinical reasoning development and build our collective knowledge.
Methods and/or Description of Project: Each presenter will share information about their research in clinical reasoning including how these studies were developed and implemented to illustrate the educational research process. Each presenter will focus on how each study was initially conceived and what the process was for study development and implementation to assist participants with considering their own future educational research. Each presenter will take a dual focus speaking both to clinical reasoning and educational research. Recommendation 17 from the National Study on Excellence and Innovation in PT Education will be the link connecting these exemplars of clinical reasoning to the generation of an agenda to tackle what we still want and need to know about teaching, learning and assessment of clinical reasoning abilities.
The outline for this session will include the following: • Introduction and overview of topic and session (MJR)
• Concepts of clinical reasoning in physical therapy education (KH)
• Patterns of clinical reasoning in DPT students (SG)
• Assessment of clinical reasoning across the DPT curriculum (MJR)
• Highlights of research study designs and key elements of study implementation within existing courses and curriculum (all)
• Implementation of research exemplars (all)
• Discussion in small and large groups to focus on individual research questions and suggestions for studies
• Summary: how does research to inform practice and practice to inform research?
Results/Outcomes: The expected result of this session is that participants will be informed on the topic of clinical reasoning concepts, patterns, and assessment related to physical therapy education and use this information to inform their own teaching in classroom or clinic. In addition, the participants would have a better understanding from the examples shared during the session of how to begin the process of educational research design and implementation within their own classroom or clinical education setting.
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: This presentation is directly linked to the conference theme by showing first-hand how educational research can be used to steer future curricular change and guide a collaborative agenda to meet national recommendations. Simultaneously, participants will “set sail” with new opportunities in developing and implementing their own education research projects to enhance understanding of CR across the continuum of learning.